Camila Aguilar-Rodriguez, left, and Chloe Haussmann, students at Mentone Elementary School, learned about potential and kinetic energy using the Tinkerbox app as part of the Project Lead the Way curriculum.

MENTONE — Monday, Aug. 7, marked the beginning of the 2017-18 school year for Tippecanoe Valley schools. Students are filling classrooms from the elementary through high school levels, though a disturbing trend during the last 10 or so years has been less state funding for the more rural and smaller school districts in Indiana.

Dr. Brett Boggs, superintendent of the Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation, is deeply concerned about what could happen. “Smaller rural school districts are steadily being choked,” he said, “and they really can’t cut anymore. The next step is consolidation,” which he would not like to see happen because some small communities would lose their identity and kids would have to be transported longer distances to school.

Boggs noted the trend of less funding for rural districts has been during roughly the last 10 years. He cited the Kernan-Shepard Report, a part of which would have done away with smaller school districts in the state. It was never implemented, but now the funding formula used by the state is less favorable to rural school districts because it is based on current enrollment, not an average of multiple years as in the past.

“Funding changed when the state took over the general fund (of the budget), the largest fund,” Boggs said. “They told us they were going to run the show and the money now follows the child. If your enrollment is declining, you lose funding.”

He said it is not uncommon for the Tippecanoe Valley district to lose as much as $200,000 to $300,000 of state funding in one year. Enrollment has been declining for about the last 10 years and since 2009, according to the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, funding for rural districts has decreased by 7 percent. Admittedly, Valley has not been affected as much as smaller districts such as Argos, Triton and North Miami. “We are at the next level and have about 2,000 students,” he said, but the allowances once given by the state to rural schools have been removed.

Add to the mix voucher funding for private education is increasing and farmland is being assessed differently and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture for rural school districts. “Farmland is down in value and it went down for the first time in many years, which is really hurting rural districts,” Boggs said.

J. Scott Turney, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, said population shifts is another factor to consider. Generally speaking, more people are moving to the urban centers in the state such as Indianapolis, Evansville, Fort Wayne and others. Turney noted during the two most recent school years, for every student gained by a member school of the association, 4.5 students were lost elsewhere. “You could then say that there is more movement out of small rural districts than staying the same or moving in,” he said, emphasizing the numbers are only for member schools.

He also cited other factors such as property tax caps and the “circuit breaker” legislation as having an effect on state funding for rural districts.

And when a district loses students, they are usually not all from the same grade level or out of one class. But the same teachers and staff need to be kept, though funding has declined because the enrollment dropped.

This has made grant funding and donations more important than ever. Valley for the first time hired a grant writer and is looking to form more partnerships. “We fortunately have not had to let teachers go,” Boggs said.

He added Valley has been successful in encouraging its “best and brightest” students to come back to teach. “They like the small, rural community setting,” he said.

Reversing the trend is not out of the question, but will be difficult. Boggs said he and others have talked to local legislators, some of whom have spoken up on behalf of rural districts, but typically “it falls on deaf ears.”

He strongly encourages voters to talk to legislators “or it may be too late.”