By VICKI URBANIK

Adult education programs in Northwest Indiana, including the Chesterton Adult Learning Center, may be forced to shut down due to what appears to be the most serious funding crisis in the program’s 45-year history.

Despite its name, the Portage Adult Education serves a six-county area with more than 20 learning centers in communities that include Chesterton and Valparaiso. The program gets about $1.5 million a year in federal and state grants, contingent upon a local match of about $150,000. The Portage Township Schools, which is the administrative agent for the program, bills area schools systems for the costs and has picked up the annual deficits.

But that financial backing from the Portage schools might come to an end, raising the possibility that the entire adult education program will end sometime next year.

The Portage Township School Board is poised to enact a resolution next month expected to say that unless an adequate funding source is secured, the school system will cease to be the administrative agent for the program.

Portage Township Schools Superintendent Michael Berta said that would mean that some other entity would have to become the new administrator, likely sometime in the spring once Portage Schools’ contractual obligations with staff expire and once the fiscal year ends on June 30.

If no other administrator comes forward or no other funding source secured, Berta said there is a “strong possibility” that adult education will shut down.

Portage Township Schools has been the administrative agent since the program’s inception when it was awarded funds to begin an adult ed program in this area. The program has since grown, now serving about 3,000 adult students from a six-county area, offering classes that include GED completion, parenting skills, ISTEP remediation, English language instruction, computer skills and a variety of non-credit continuing education courses.

Berta said that about two-thirds of the students are not from Portage Township. Despite that, the Portage Schools has annually picked up the bulk of the local costs. In 2006, Portage Township paid $90,845, representing the costs for Portage Township residents in the program, but it also picked up the remaining $110,473 deficit.

The Portage Schools bill other school systems for the costs of their respective schools systems that attend adult education; Duneland Schools paid what was billed in 2006, a total of $20,660. But Berta said not all schools pay what is billed, and that they aren’t obligated to do so. The billing process was something that the Portage Schools came up with on its own, he said, and there’s nothing in state law to require the other schools to pay.

“That’s the essence of the problem,” he said.

This year, the Porter County Community Foundation and The Discovery Alliance contributed $100,000 to the program, with another $10,000 provided by the Center for Workforce Innovations, covering the deficit for this year.

“That gave us another year for us to find a permanent solution,” said Portage Adult Education Director Paula Siminski.

But Berta also said a permanent funding solution is needed, since the Portage Schools no longer can pick up the deficit. “We can’t continue to seek a band-aid fix to this,” he said.

Berta said he planned to hold a meeting today with adult ed officials, and possibly others, to discuss options.

One solution, he said, would be for the state to establish a funding formula, similar to the state’s formula for students in the regular K-12 program, that would cover the costs of all adult students. That way, Portage Schools would pay only for the students from Portage Township enrolled. “I believe that would be the fairest and most sensible way to deal with this,” Berta said.

Duneland Superintendent Dirk Baer said he thinks that option is a good idea, as long as the state adequately funds the costs. He expressed concern about forcing schools to take on another program when they already have unmet budget needs for the K-12 program and other programs.

“We don’t need another unfunded mandate,” he said.

Siminski said other funding solutions are being explored, including a fundraising campaign. “There mare many hopeful things in the works,” she said.