With numerous school districts proposing referendums and cutting costs in the wake of the 2025 state property tax law, school funding has become a topic of interest — including Indiana’s school voucher program, which cost about $500 million in the 2024-25 school year. 

Some area public school officials said that although they support school choice, they’re concerned education funding has not kept up with inflation, let alone the expanded voucher program, which adds to the overall cost of statewide education. However, a school choice advocate said Indiana’s voucher funding protocols are a model for other states.

Hamilton Southeastern Schools Superintendent Matt Kegley said each district in Indiana is affected differently by school choice scholarships, commonly called vouchers, and he respects the state’s decision to provide that funding. At the same time, he said, vouchers can affect what’s available to the public school system overall. 

HSE Chief Financial Officer Tim Brown likened state education funding to one big pie. 

“Every time you cut a slice into that pie, that is less overall funding for a traditional public school like our school district,” Brown said. “What has happened over the years is the income thresholds by which families can qualify for these choice scholarships has been expanded by a pretty significant amount, where maybe going back to the 2021 school year, that amount was in the $48,000 to $50,000 range for a family of four, to where it sits today at over $244,000.”

Brown said as the income threshold for qualifying families increased, so did the number of students within HSE boundaries using scholarships. But that doesn’t mean those students left HSE or would have ever attended public school. He said the students may well have gone to private school no matter what and voucher funding was “the icing on the cake.”

Westfield Washington Schools Superintendent John Atha agreed many voucher students likely would not be public school students anyway. He said when the program first was introduced in 2011, he was principal at the private Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis.

“My experience is, we did not have a lot of families who were (choosing public schools) start using vouchers,” he said. “We just had families who were already in with us, who maybe got some relief.”

That means more students in the funding pool for education dollars. Atha cited a 2023 Indiana University study that showed about 70 percent of Indiana voucher students already attended private school. 

“And those dollars have to come from somewhere,” he said. “What’s happened is, they have not expanded total spending on education — which is the state’s responsibility — to match the spending on the vouchers, especially for the added students who were already in private education.”

Atha clarified state education funding has increased, but has not kept pace with inflation, especially considering the estimated 75,000 voucher students that cost the state an estimated $500 million in the 2024-25 school year.

“If my costs are growing and enrollment is growing at 5 percent, and my budget’s only growing at three and a half percent, then obviously I’m going to have to do more with less,” Atha said. “And so, for me specifically, when I think about funding — if you want to keep the voucher program, it can’t be at the expense of traditional public schools. It has to be in addition to.”

Atha stressed that he supports school choice and believes that option makes education stronger overall. He said the conversation is about designing a funding system that doesn’t weaken public schools, which educate the majority of Hoosier kids. 

Carmel Clay Schools Associate Superintendent Roger McMichael said several changes in state funding for public education over the past 15 years – including expansion of the voucher program – have been implemented “at the expense of public schools.” 

“I would like to see the State of Indiana get behind its traditional public schools,” McMichael said. “There’s not a lot of conversation about what’s best for a child. (When the voucher program launched), it was for kids in a failing school who can’t get out. Now the conversation is, ‘Everybody gets a voucher.’ This whole conversation is about money. It’s not about the interest of the child.” 

Some of the schools receiving voucher funds are for-profit entities, McMichael said. Many of them are not held to the same set of standards as public schools, which are required to publish their budgets, answer to publicly elected school boards and provide special education services. 

“Private schools don’t have to play by those rules,” CCS Superintendent Thomas Oestreich said. “I understand that families make decisions they believe are the best for their children, and I respect that. I respect choice. However, choice without accountability is not an efficient way to spend taxpayer dollars.” 

Institute for Quality Education President and CEO Betsy Wiley countered that Indiana’s funding system for school choice scholarships works well, and actually is a model for other states. 

“The job is to fund and educate all of Indiana’s kids, and so (lawmakers) have been strong supporters in all of their policies in terms of dollars following the child to the school that they go to,” she said. “That philosophy held true in the establishment of the voucher program and how that funding took place.”

Wiley noted that the money follows the child no matter what school they choose, including another public school that isn’t their home district. She said the general belief that tax money should go to public institutions is an idea teacher unions have promoted. However, Wiley said, the funding belongs to the students and their education. 

She supports universal vouchers, with no income threshold.

“I believe that every student in the state of Indiana should be given access to their education funding that the state has allocated,” she said, noting that if students from wealthy families attend public school, they’re funded and nobody complains. 

In response to concerns about reduced funding for public schools, Wiley — who was former Gov. Mitch Daniels’ deputy chief of staff and worked many years in the Statehouse — said she has never heard anyone in public education suggest that education is adequately funded. 

“Every time, it’s, ‘We need more money,’” she said. “I think that it’s an interesting question because there’s not really data out there that suggests more money equals greater academic outcomes.”

She said the appropriate level of education funding is something for state lawmakers to determine, but the state should stick with its model of funding the education of all students, regardless of where they go to school. 

By the numbers

The Indiana Department of Education website has details about the school choice scholarship program, including how many students within each public school district use school vouchers to attend a private school or another public school.

Westfield Washington Schools reported that for the 2025-26 school year, 776 students used a voucher to attend a non-WWS school — an increase from the 2024-25 level of 302.

According to the state DOE’s annual report on school vouchers, at HSE Schools, 1,400 students within district boundaries used school choice scholarships to attend a different school in the 2024-25 school year.

Brownsburg Community Schools Corp. had 765 students use vouchers; Carmel Clay Schools had 541 students; MSD of Lawrence Township had 1,655; Noblesville Schools had 582; and Zionsville Community Schools had 166.