{"id":3490,"date":"2023-06-15T13:19:33","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T17:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=3490"},"modified":"2023-06-15T13:19:36","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T17:19:36","slug":"state-report-shows-voucher-program-highly-popular-in-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/15\/state-report-shows-voucher-program-highly-popular-in-area\/","title":{"rendered":"State report shows voucher program highly popular in area"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DANE FUELLING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indiana Department of Education recently published a report on the state\u2019s Choice Scholarship Program, commonly referred to as \u201cvouchers\u201d, showing that the program is especially popular in the northern half of Adams County and in southern Allen County, with over $1 million dollars of state money going to private or parochial schools in the past year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state has recently changed the income guidelines, which will allow for more students to be eligible under income requirements. Government leaders have also removed several restrictions on who is eligible, making it likely that participation in the program will increase again for the 2023-24 academic year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past year, eligibility was defined as 300% of \u2018Reduced Lunch Eligibility.\u2019 This measure meant a household of four needed to make less than $154,000 to be eligible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participation in the program has increased nearly every year since its inception. Last year 53,262 students used the program, up nearly 9,000 students from the year before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is now a significantly higher number of students in private\/parochial schools who are in the program as opposed to those at the private schools who do not participate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A breakdown of data from the report:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Number of students from local school districts attending private or parochial school on Choice Scholarship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adams Central 12<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East Allen 1,551<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay School Corporation 118<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MSD Bluffton-Harrison 0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northern Wells 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Adams 207<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Adams 0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: The state lists any school district with a single-digit number in this statistic as zero for confidentiality reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choice Scholarship Students by local parochial\/private school (with award amounts in parentheses):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bishop Dwenger HS 589   ($3,491,082)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bishop Luers HS 433   ($2,699,877)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blackhawk Christian Elementary 398   ($2,458,673)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blackhawk Christian JH\/SH 311   ($1,945,424)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Central Lutheran 243   ($1,324,350)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concordia Lutheran Elementary 310   ($1,821,546)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concordia Lutheran HS 398   ($2,569,569)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emmanuel St. Michael Lutheran 255   ($1,009,105)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emmaus Lutheran 105   ($557,461)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holy Cross Lutheran 289   ($1,478,792)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay County Christian Academy 126   ($774,999)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lutheran South Unity 135   ($882,532)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saint Aloysius Catholic 44   ($266,557)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saint Charles Catholic 581   ($3,598,941)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. John Emmanuel Lutheran 64   ($384,000)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Joseph Hessen Cassel 132   ($743,128)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Joseph Catholic (Decatur) 177   ($1,040,766)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Louis Besancon 104   ($656,383)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Paul Lutheran 117   ($698,316)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Peter-Immanuel 27   ($94,100)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Vincent DePaul Catholic 460   ($2,770,379)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woodburn Lutheran 90   ($573,917)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: Wyneken Lutheran School and Zion (Decatur) Lutheran School do not participate in the program and are not included in the report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Award amounts by local School Corporation of participating students:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adams Central $65,344<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East Allen $9,264, 535<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Wayne Community $31,006,936<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay School Corporation $725,197<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Adams $1,153,705<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northern Wells $129,128<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full report can be found on the Department of Education\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DANE FUELLING WZBD.com The Indiana Department of Education recently published a report on the state\u2019s Choice Scholarship Program,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,21],"class_list":["post-3490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/photoless-header-template-news.jpg?fit=252%2C144&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}