In what was billed as a Public Work Session, Community Schools of Frankfort school board members had an opportunity for an hour discussion with Indiana State Senator Brian Buchanan about K-12 education in the state of Indiana Thursday night.
“I’ve reached out to several school board corporations, superintendents, groups of teachers, school boards just to listen what’s on their minds,” said Buchanan. “K-12 education is 50 percent of the state’s budget. So, it’s very important. It’s good for me to stay connected, stay grounded and hear what educators, administrators, teachers have to say about what’s going on in K-12 education in Indiana.”
Community Schools of Frankfort Superintendent Joel McKinney said Buchanan reached out to their board about having a meeting.
“We’re very thankful that Senator Buchanan is open to meeting with our board and just having a frank conversation about some of the decisions that are being made by the Legislature and just giving him some of our opinions and thoughts where we can find some common ground,” said McKinney.
One of the things that McKinney and the board wanted to discuss with Buchanan was how important the complexity index is to schools like the Community Schools of Frankfort.
“Just to have Senator Buchanan hear that conversation reiterated, hopefully he’ll go away from the meeting realizing the fair and equal conversations is really about supporting schools with some kids who really need additional support,” said McKinney. “Hopefully, we got a little leverage in that regard.”
Buchanan said that funding for each student is real close to $7,000 per student.
“When you add complexity on top of that and complexity is if a kid has special needs or needs special services,” said Buchanan. “That’s where it’s different.”
Buchanan added he was happy with the meeting.
“This was a great meeting,” he said. “It’s just an opportunity for me to hear from the school board members here in Frankfort. Obviously, a common theme I hear from schools is they need more money. They would like more money to increase services, to increase teacher’s pay and provide more resources for kids. We also talked about some of their challenges.”
Part of the state budget proposal is an $875 million state funding increase plus $3 billion in federal stimulus money. Indiana schools are looking at $3.8 billion in new funding.