For school corporations with large enrollment growth, this lag poses a major fiscal burden, especially when they need to hire additional teachers. The new formula provides that if enrollment growt h for the current school year is 250 or more, the school corporation will receive one third of the per-student tuition support for each additional student. Senators hope this will relieve some of the financial resource problems found in corporations with increasing enrollments. Once the total funding available to each school corporation has been determined, the state and local shares of that funding must be set. Categorical programs are funded entirely with state funds, but the base tuition as determined through the various adj ustments already described comes from both state and local sources.
Property taxes make up most of the local share.
The property tax rate for schools is directly established by the school funding formula. After that rate is set, the state makes up the dif ference. The property tax rate is set on the basis of a property tax matrix that matches the tuition revenue per student calculated for each school corporation to a particular tax rate. However, tax rates are adjusted incrementally toward this goal. Also, the matrix was changed to have the same number of school corporations with declining and increasing tax rates.