INDIANAPOLIS (AP)
— The refunding of nearly $4 million in Indiana private school voucher
money to the state has raised questions about oversight of the program
that now includes almost 30,000 students.
The Indiana
Non-Public Education Association said in mid-December that 80 of the more
than 300 private schools participating in the program made errors in
calculating voucher costs over the past three years.
House Education
Committee Chairman Robert Behning, who was a leading sponsor of the 2011
bill that created the voucher program, said that legislators should look
into simpler rules for the system and ways to better track compliance.
"I don't know
that we've found the right formula to make sure it's enforced," Behning,
R-Indianapolis, told The Indianapolis Star.
Indiana's voucher
program has grown quickly since it started three years ago limited to
7,500 low-income students who had to have attended public school for at
least one year to qualify.
About four times
as many students are receiving vouchers as legislators have broadened
eligibility to include more children who've not been in the public
schools. The state paid out about $81 million for vouchers last year.
John Elcesser,
executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, said
the $3.9 million in returned voucher payments show that the private
schools in the program are policing themselves.
The maximum
voucher payment is $4,800 per elementary school student, but the state law
limits schools to accepting no more than the student's family would be
charged without the voucher.
The excessive
payments often resulted from private schools not applying the appropriate
tuition discounts for parishioners, employees or families with more than
one child enrolled, Elcesser said.
"Philosophically,
schools subsidize those families (as) a way of trying to keep their
tuition affordable," he said. "Technically, now the schools are
subsidizing the state, because the family is still getting discounted
tuition."
The state
Department of Education doesn't have the legal authority to audit the
voucher program, agency spokesman Daniel Altman said.
Rep. Greg Porter,
the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said he worries
the refunded voucher amount is just the tip of the iceberg — and that
Republican Gov. Mike Pence's proposal to lift the voucher payment limit
could make the problem worse.
"If the
governor's going to remove the caps even further, that means more public
dollars will be flowing to vouchers, to private schools, and there won't
be any oversight," said Porter, D-Indianapolis.
Elcesser said
that mistakes with the voucher payments might be inevitable.
"I think when
you're dealing with things that are complex — which is true for most state
programs — and you're dealing with 317 schools, and four or five people
out at each of those schools, there's going to be misinterpretations," he
said. "There are going to be errors."
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