Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
BCSC launches 'Fiscal Cents' video to explain school finance; schedules budget workshops
Loading...
Summary
Bartholomew Con School Corp assistant superintendent Brett Bozeman launched a video series called Fiscal Cents to explain how school funding works, outlined education, operations and debt-service funds, said BCSC will transfer about 7% to operations in 2026, and announced budget workshops beginning 04/27/2026.
Brett Bozeman, assistant superintendent of Bartholomew Con School Corp, said the district is launching a new video series to walk the public through school finances. "Today, we are launching a new video series called Fiscal Cents," Bozeman said, adding that the first episode explains how a district determines its budget.
Bozeman said Indiana school districts receive funding through four main streams and briefly described each. He said the education fund comes from the state budget and is paid at a flat rate per student; "more students means more money, fewer students means less money," he said. He described the operations fund as the property-tax-funded account that pays for day-to-day services such as buses, utilities, insurance and facility costs.
The assistant superintendent said districts can transfer money from the education fund to the operations fund and that "In BCSC in 2026, around 7% is transferred." He noted the state limit on such transfers: "The state allows up to 15%." Bozeman warned that if state tuition dollars do not keep pace with inflation, "schools have to make up the difference somewhere else," a dynamic that sometimes leads districts to ask voters for additional funding through referendums.
Bozeman also explained the debt service fund, saying it is funded through a separate property tax levy and is legally restricted to capital uses such as bonds and building projects. "Debt service cannot be redirected to pay teachers, buy textbooks, or cover utility bills," he said, using a household mortgage analogy to emphasize that those funds are committed to specific capital purposes.
To give residents a chance to learn more and review the district's budget estimates, Bozeman said BCSC will hold a series of budget workshops during school board meetings this spring and summer. "The first of these will be 04/27/2026," he said, and invited community members to attend to learn more about how school finance works and to observe the corporation's transparency and fiscal responsibility.
The video is part of a planned series that Bozeman said will cover funding streams, referendums and other elements of school finance in more detail. The district provided specific figures for enrollment (nearly 12,000 students across 18 schools) and the planned transfer rate for 2026 but did not present new legislation or request voter action in this video.
