Speech Given at the Tailiaferro Dinner, Monroe County Democratic Party of Indiana

Hello, I want to thank David and the rest of the Monroe County Dems for inviting me here this evening. I see a lot of familiar faces. It is so good to see you all at this wonderful venue and event.

I am Chair of the Monroe County Indiana Coalition for Public Education. We’re non-partisan. We’re composed of citizens. We are very grassroots (got very little money). We fight for public schools - the hearts of our communities - at the statehouse via a lobbyist. We donate to candidates that support public schools. And we educate folks about the ever changing state of school choice in Indiana. 

I was invited to talk about school vouchers.  I’ve got this script here as I can easily tangent if I just ramble…and I will confuse you all because school funding is so confusing. 

AND I really want to talk about  fun things! Like how much I love that former teachers are running for office. And I love that Tim Walz went viral over gutters and Menards. I work in residential and commercial construction and gutters is something I sometimes obsess over. 

But back to the matter at hand. I need to talk to you about school vouchers – one of the most radical ideas out there. Vouchers are NOT conservative. They are money pits. School vouchers are public funds that are used in the private sector to help off-set personal, private education costs. 

School vouchers are different from state to state. Indiana alone has three types of education vouchers - 4 if you count the pre-tax Scholarship Granting Organization program (SGO for short). The largest voucher program in Indiana (and one of the largest and oldest in the country) is the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program that has been around since 2011. With this voucher, caregivers use a lump sum from the state to help pay for private school tuition. In Indiana - since around 2008 - the money follows the child, which  set the stage for vouchers in 2011.The lump sum of a voucher is worth 90% of the dollar amount that would go with the child to their public school district. That 90% chunk of change - 6000 something dollars -  goes straight from the government to the private school. 

And let me clarify, Charter schools do not accept vouchers (if you’ve made this mistake you’re not alone - our state government over the past 15 years has made our education system very difficult to understand). Charter schools are considered public schools in Indiana. However charter schools, like private schools, don’t follow the exact same rules as traditional public schools. The further you get from public schools the more the rules change, and the fewer rights you have. And the public - taxpayers and school consumers aren’t clearly told this. Marketing is slick. There are few guardrails. 

Back to vouchers - The Choice Scholarship program has grown over 2,800 % since 2012. What was a program sold to legislators to help the poor, is now accessible to 97% of the population. 

A Family of 4 earning 230,000 or less can qualify for a school voucher. But a family of 4 making over 48,000 can’t qualify for free lunch. And a family making over $33,000 can’t qualify for state subsidized preschool.  

We Hoosiers didn’t get to vote for vouchers.  But we Hoosier taxpayers have spent over $2.16 billion on vouchers and yet we are not keeping up with inflation when it comes to funding our public school system. In many private schools almost all children have a voucher and many of these kids would have never attended public school in the first place. Indiana is crazy radical with taxpayer money. We’re now practically funding three separate K12 school systems. Public, charter, and voucher. If Choice Scholarships were its own general fund appropriation, it would be #5. It costs us taxpayers more than the budget lines for child services, more than the Indiana Economic Development Consortium, more than what the state sends to Purdue, IU, Ball State, etc. Next year, it will likely be #4, jumping ahead of the family and children fund. 

To make matters worse, vouchers affect all school districts. If you picture the tuition support funding bucket from the state—which about 50 percent of our state budget (and why we need teachers in charge of our state)—vouchers get a cut from that bucket. There’s an estimated cost. But there is no cap on choice scholarships. And because it comes from that bucket it affects every school budget. You can have no private schools around you. You can have no child in your district using a voucher. But vouchers affect your school district. 

If you go on the ICPE website - indianacoalitionforpubliced.org, you can see how vouchers affect your school district. It’s a fun game of what would your district gain if vouchers didn’t exist and funding remained the same. For example, MCCSC could have gained $18 million total over the past 7 years. That’s a lot of money. 
 
To top it off there is no accountability to taxpayers. We don’t know how this money is being spent. These schools can legally discriminate even though they are accessing funds from the same bucket as public schools. Public schools must accept all students. 

It’s really hard to roll back from where we are right now. But we can push our legislators to make it better.  Our state legislators can add guardrails, more accountability, more transparency measures.  They can also establish a moratorium on the expansion of all vouchers.

We Hoosiers can also be better citizens, better community members. 

There’s a lot of school options in Monroe county. And now tax dollars follow a lot of those choices. In 2008, public funds, for the most part, went to 2 public school districts in Monroe County. In 2024, due to choice funding expansion over the years, state tax dollars followed Monroe County school-age children to almost 50 different outside-of-district schools including 10 charters and 11 private schools. 

There’s nothing wrong with sending your child to a private school. But you don’t have to apply for a voucher if you can afford to pay out of pocket. Taking voucher funds affects the bottom line of all public schools right now due to how the funding model works. This affects your community. 

There is also nothing wrong with trying a public school first. Our Monroe County public schools–both RBB and MCCSC—are solid districts. They are filled with so many kids from so many walks of life. Public school is where we first learn to get along with people who may be different from us.  Public schools are the heart of our communities. And a cornerstone of democracy. 

Deep breath! I’m almost done! 

I have three action steps for you: 

1. See if your state legislative candidates signed the ICPE pledge to support public schools, reject expansion of vouchers, and demand better accountability. I know a lot of candidates in this area have signed the ICPE pledge. But we need you to ask candidates of all parties to sign. Because we Hoosier can’t afford more choice.  More choice = more taxes. 
2. Share the pledge list with family members who are torn on who to vote for. The pledge is on our website and there is a handout.  Next year is a budget year. We need to fund our public schools first. Inflation has not been kind. Funding private schools is not in the state constitution. 
3. Join our organization. It’s an annual fee. Our membership dollars pay for a lobbyist at the statehouse among other things.  

Thank you for your time. 
Keri Jean Miksza - Chair, Indiana Coalition for Public Education—Monroe County

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