How a vague, overly broad state law can hurt South Bend schools

The efforts by a charter faculty to prevent the planned shift of the South Bend college district into various business office area — getting edge of a controversial legislation — could established a precedent in Indiana.

It would not be a excellent just one, for the faculty district and other people throughout the point out.

Below the point out regulation in query, general public faculty districts like South Bend have to notify point out officials of specified unused home. That is mainly because charter faculties in the condition have the right to invest in or lease unused general public college buildings for $1.

The two university buildings in query are the downtown administration creating, which the university district options to market to the city of South Bend and Brown Group Finding out Center, where it strategies to shift right after the sale and a renovation.

Additional: Constitution college attempts to stop go of South Bend district workplaces. It is really a initially in Indiana.

South Bend faculty leaders have reported they can save $400,000 per year in working expenditures by advertising the administration creating. Metropolis officers have mentioned they can preserve $270,000 in yearly working charges by transferring out of the County-City Creating.

But individuals designs have been threatened just after complaints by South Bend’s Career and Achievements Academy, which also has desire in the Brown developing. The point out legal professional general’s workplace lately backed the constitution school’s complaints, obtaining that the district had violated condition law.

It is really the to start with time in Indiana that a faculty district has been discovered in violation of a state law on “unused” school properties.

Additional complicating matters is the ambiguity of the $1 regulation about what the “use” of a faculty setting up usually means, and the fact that the legislation has transformed quite a few occasions, drawing lawful issues by school districts in other counties. These improvements have produced it far more intricate for college directors to make decisions about unused services.

Which potential customers to this burning dilemma: Why did Indiana lawmakers pass an extremely wide regulation that hamstrings school districts? It is really not the 1st time they have created obstacles for public educational facilities. In this case, the law makes complications for university leaders trying to conserve dollars by shifting their district workplaces to a single of its have buildings.

Story proceeds

The legislature continues to tilt the scales in favor of constitution universities. The issues and difficulties of general public educational institutions are well-documented, and all people would seem to have an plan about how to solve them. A legislation that hurts taxpayer-supported instruction only adds to these issues.

And now, possible enforcement of that law, obscure as it is, will only tilt the scales further more — and even a lot more unfairly for schooling alternative in Indiana.

This post initially appeared on South Bend Tribune: Indiana lawmakers keep on to tilt scales in favor of charter colleges