New Palestine Elementary School, along with every public K-12 school in Indiana, will no longer require parents to pay for curricular material fees, typically presented at registration before the school year begins.
Lacey Watt | Daily Reporter
HANCOCK COUNTY — As parents prepare children for school, textbook fees are one less thing to worry about, according to a new Indiana law.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb introduced the idea of eliminating curricular material fees for public schools, grades K-12, at the beginning of the 2023 legislative session, and was made into law effective July 1.
Indiana, being one of the few states left to make the change, now will require all public schools to provide for and stop charging curricular fees. Curricular fees pay for hardback books, technology — laptops, Chromebooks, iPads — software and digital content.
As part of the new law, $160 million has been appropriated for the next two years for K-12 public schools and eligible non-public schools. According to the Indiana Department of Education’s FAQ page, those school corporations will receive one annual lump sum payment in December to go toward the cost of providing curricular materials.
However, the change may not be as smooth as what it seems when it comes to schools having to provide textbooks at no cost, raising the question if the total allocation will be sufficient.
Greenfield-Central Community School Corparation Superintendent Harold Olin says there are a lot of unknown variables because of this being the first school year under the new law.
Olin mentioned the $160 million was based on preliminary studies that were based on the idea that each school was spending approximately $150-160 per student.
Nathaniel Day, business manager, said they may eventually have to dip into their education fund if the funds provided by the state don’t cover every student. He mentioned the amount allocated when divided by the number of eligible students is going to be much lower than what most schools currently have for textbook rental fees.
“We have been very judicious in how we’ve been spending our education fund in order to prepare ourselves for continuing to attract, train and retain high quality teachers; to give raises to our instructional assistants, our bus drivers…” Day said. “This is just something that is becoming another piece of that puzzle, that we’re going to use available dollars and spread them out appropriately and hopefully lessen the impact across the entire program.”
Fee collection for grades 7-12 for Greenfield-Central doesn’t happen until around September because classes can change. However, grades K-6 typically would pay fees when they register. This year, Olin said they had to put out a statement that they will not be collecting fees as they start on the school year.
Olin said what’s unclear is the consumables they have for the students, such as workbooks that students will keep that go along with the textbooks. Other fees also include supplies that get consumed during classes and band instruments.
Greenfield-Central schools will continue to offer the optional insurance for textbooks, specially for technology pieces. Day does encourage the purchase of the insurance so parents won’t have to later cover the costs for a new device.
“We don’t want to change the student experience in terms of from a curricular standpoint,” Olin said. “There are some things we’re going to have to figure out this year one, in terms of how we cover that gap, but we don’t want students to have a different experience or lesser experience, so we’ll make sure that happens.”
Dr. Lisa Lantrip, superintendent of Community School Corporation of Southern Hancock County, gave similar answers when asked if the funds allocated would be enough.
After doing some estimations based on the numbers provided so far, Lantrip said, for their share of the budget, they would recieve about $565,000. Lantrip shared that they have a shortfall of about $800,000 dollars.
The majority of the shortfall comes from technology. Lantrip shared that right now students lease computers, which is included in the circular cost they paid.
Lantrip says they are in the process of figuring out how to make up the shortfall from what they used to receive from the state to what the new law has allocated for them to use for the next two school years.
Lantrip says they are looking at two funds when they’ll have to make up the shortfall — the education fund and operations fund.
“We’re looking at all of our options at this point in time because the goal is are children have the materials that they need, including the technology device in order to learn, and our teachers have what they need in order to teach,” Lantrip said.
Lantrip says they are going to wait and see what actually happens versus what they think will happen. They currently have their number calculated for what they think will happen, and once they get into the school year, they can then see what they will need to do as far as their next move.
For this year, Southern Hancock families will still get a form that shows the list of costs for the school year, but under curricular fees, it will say exempt — that way parents are informed on what they pay for and what the school is now paying.
Lantrip said she believes a huge thanks is owed to Sen. Micheal Crider, R-Greenfield, and Rep. Robert Cherry, R-Greenfield, for work they did when the law was first introduced, making sure the people were being heard as the budget was being created.
While the new law leaves school corporations with lingering questions until school starts, it provides Indiana families with one less thing to worry about.
Leslie Dickson, Greenfield, attended Greenfield’s Community Night last week to grab some free school supplies and let her children touch a firetruck.
Dickerson had mentioned she had just learned not too long ago she would no longer have to pay textbook fees.
Out of the few families that spoke on the topic, Dickerson was the only one who knew beforehand the textbook fees were going away.
“Immediately, so it is a benefit to our family,” Dickerson said. “We have six children in the school system so not having to pay a stack of six school book tuitions is really helpful this year.”
School corporations won’t officially know how the new law is going to impact them until the 2023-24 school year gets started and, even then, there will be a possibility for questions to arise. As far as for Hancock County families, that’s one less fee at registration.
