“A couple of years ago on the south end of the county, we always had a developmental delay preschool, but we started an open preschool for the community as well,” Hocker notes.“North Decatur Elementary is just beginning their preschool program this year, so they will also have a preschool class.” The district’s family atmosphere distinguishes it from larger systems. When asked to describe the school district’s unique qualities, Hocker responds: “By far what they felt was that it was more of a family: the teachers are a family, the communities are families, and everybody gives 110% to make sure that kids succeed in whatever avenues that they choose to go through.” OVERCOMING FINANCIAL PRESSURES AND FUTURE SUSTAINABILITY Public education typically faces unprecedented fiscal challenges such as demographic shifts, policy changes, and economic pressures converge to strain traditional funding models. Indiana’s rural districts confront particularly acute difficulties, with state funding formulas that favor enrollment growth while many small communities experience population decline. Against this backdrop, high-performing districts like Decatur County Community Schools must find a way to maintain excellence and manage increasingly constrained resources. Burns identifies the core challenge facing his district over the next 24 months. “Everything that we’re dealing with right now is dealing with the financial difficulties of dealing with the legislature and our state. Indiana is really shifting a lot of its focus and funding toward charters and private schools.” The state’s recent policy changes compound these pressures. “They just did a massive property tax cut throughout the state. And as a homeowner, that’s awesome. As someone who tries to run a school corporation and probably 55 to 60% of our entire budget comes from property taxes, it’s what drives our operations, our transportation, basically any human being and anything in a school that’s not a teacher, they just had a massive cut to that.” The district faces difficult conversations ahead. “We’re hoping not to make any major changes in programming or offering any types of programming, 253 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 08 DECATUR COUNTY COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI5MjAx