Proposed Truitt Legislation Would Help School Districts

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Representative Randy Truitt was featured in a recent edition of Indiana Education Insight. The publication referenced Truitt's efforts, in this challenging time of budget cuts for schools, to grant school districts greater flexibility in the use of their existing funding.  Click on "Read More" below for more details! 

House Bill 1016, authored by Representative Truitt, would permit, with several restrictions, a school corporation to transfer money in the corporation’s general fund, transportation fund, capital projects fund, or school bus replacement fund to another fund for the purposes of the fund to which the money is transferred.  Indiana Education Insight's January 11th edition referenced the legislation as follows:
 
"Rep. Randy Truitt (R) of West Lafayette and Sen. Sue Errington (D) of Muncie file legislation in their respective chambers granting school districts greater flexibility to transfer money between the General Fund, Transportation Fund, Capital Projects Fund, or School Bus Replacement Fund.
 
A precedent exists here. P.L. 224-2003 permitted districts to transfer dollars between funds for the 2004 and 2005 calendar years (the law was not renewed). The legislation specifically prohibits a levy increase. The Legislative Services Agency estimates districts statewide ended Calendar Year 2008 with cash balances of $136 million in their Transportation Fund and $392 million in the Capital Projects Fund.
 
"We're asking all of our school corporations to do more with less, and many have money sitting there that could be spent to retain teachers," explains Rep. Truitt, who represents five school districts. "If a school wants to make a decision to use transportation dollars to keep a golden apple teacher, we need to give them the opportunity to do that."
 
Representative Truitt's legislation has the support of local school administrators.