Bill would create fund for teaching expelled students

A bill introduced in the Indiana General Assembly would divert $10 million or more in state education money into a new fund that would make grants to schools that focus on teaching expelled students.

The idea is to get new ideas and more resources into alternative education programs, said Sen. Jim Merritt, R-Indianapolis, the author of Senate Bill 310.

“We don’t want them wandering the streets," Merritt said of the more than 4,100 students expelled statewide each year. "They deserve to be educated."

There are currently more than 200 alternative education programs around Indiana, most of them run by traditional public school districts, according to the Indiana Legislative Services Agency. However, public schools are not required to enroll expelled students into those programs and the expelled students are not required to continue going to school after their expulsion.

Also, a new charter school in Indianapolis, the Marion Academy, is focused on teaching expelled high schoolers who are in the juvenile justice system. The new law could help that school or help create others like it, noted Jason Kloth, deputy mayor of education for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.

“A fund like this would encourage more programs like [Marion],” Kloth said, though he added that he hopes most of the grants the fund would make would go to traditional public school districts.

The grants would be awarded via a competitive bidding process overseen by the Indiana Department of Education. Alternative education programs with at least 75 percent of their students actively expelled would be eligible for the grants.

Merritt’s legislation includes some of the recommendations made by the Your Life Matters task force convened last year by Ballard.

The task force’s recommendations, reported in November, called for the continued promotion of options for encouraging schools to develop discipline procedures that reduce expulsions; for the promotion of school options for parents; and for new funding to help schools bring in “wrap-around” services such as health care or counseling to help expelled students.

The task force also recommended—and Merritt’s bill would require—detailed reporting by schools on the reasons they suspend and expel students. Among public schools in Marion County, the most common reason for an out-of-school suspension is “other” and the third-most common reason is “defiance,” both of which are vague and possibly subjective.

Also, the data schools report is not broken down by race, gender or income status of students, making it hard for policymakers to understand the issues behind expulsions.

“We really need to understand what’s going on,” said Kloth, Ballard’s deputy mayor for education.

In the 2012-13 school year, public schools in Marion County handed out more than 21,000 out-of-school suspensions—not all of which were expulsions—which was equal to about 15 percent of the entire student population.

Ballard’s office calculated last year that there are about 1,800 school-age kids in Marion County that have been expelled or have dropped out. Ballard highlighted those young people, because they are far more likely than their in-school peers to commit crimes.

SB 310 would hit the finances of existing public schools, noted a fiscal note prepared by the Legislative Services Agency. It estimated the revenue losses could range between $10 million and nearly $16 million per year.

It’s not clear if public school districts or charter schools will object to the loss of funding the bill could entail for them.

J.T. Coopman, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, said he could not comment on the proposal until he studies it more.

But Merritt said SB 310 is part of a broader effort this year by Republicans in the legislature to make state education funding go wherever students go—whether that’s to a traditional public school, a charter school, a private school or an alternative education program.

“It does bear down on the idea that funding does follow the student,” Merritt said.