2024 Catholic Schools Week Supplement
Indiana’s ‘Choice’ program helps families seeking a Catholic education
As the executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, John Elcesser is striving to make school choice available to 100% of Indiana families. (Photo by Andrea Anderson of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association)
By John Shaughnessy
John Elcesser allows himself a small smile when he talks about the expansion of Indiana’s school choice program, a program which now makes 97% of the state’s families eligible to choose the school they believe is the best fit for their daughter or son.
“It’s about time,” says a smiling Elcesser, the executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association (INPEA), which represents the state’s more than 400 non-public schools, including 175 Catholic schools.
The statistics already show the impact that has resulted from the Indiana General Assembly’s decision last spring to expand the school choice program and to simplify the process for families to take advantage of that opportunity.
“Last year, we had about 53,000 students participating in the Choice Scholarship program,” Elcesser says. “This year, it’s over 69,000. So, there’s significant growth in the participation of the program.”
Beyond the numbers, Elcesser also knows the impact that the state’s commitment to school choice has made to Indiana families.
“I’ve gotten to meet with families whose lives have been changed, who never thought they’d be able to afford private schools, let alone a faith-based or Catholic school,” he says. “And there’s lots of those stories. Those are what keep you moving forward.”
The state legislature’s decision to expand the Choice Scholarship program is the latest development in providing school vouchers for Indiana families, an opportunity that first was made available to low-income families in 2011.
Now, nearly all families in the state are eligible for the Choice Scholarship program. As an example, a student from a family of four that earns up to $220,000 annually can receive a Choice Scholarship or voucher to attend any school the family chooses.
“Legislators are finally realizing that all families are taxpayers, and that tax dollars are not owned by a particular entity,” Elcesser says. “They are funds that everybody contributes to, to the support of things like education.
“In 2011, the focus was to provide choice opportunities for folks who could not afford it. But that paradigm has shifted in the last couple legislative sessions to the point of, ‘Yes, we accomplished that. Families who couldn’t afford it now have that opportunity in varying degrees. Now the paradigm is that every family should be able to use a small percentage of their state tax dollars to support their private school choice or to support other families’ private school choice.’ ”
Elcesser shared that belief in his efforts to convince state legislators to expand the Choice Scholarship program.
“When we look at the overall $44.3 billion budget, we’re talking about less than 2% going to the Choice Scholarship program,” he says. “And one of the things I’ve shared with folks too—and what I said to the Senate funding committee—was I was a Catholic school principal and a Catholic school superintendent, so it was a no-brainer that my kids were going to Catholic school, kindergarten through 12.
“In those years, I paid tuition, and I paid my taxes, and I knew I needed those taxes to support our public educational system because we need to have quality public schools. It’s essential to the state. But I also have no problem with less than 2% of my tax dollars going to support private school choice.”
Elcesser stresses that there’s a cost-benefit in school choice for the state, too. Since qualifying students can receive up to 90% of the local per-student state funding amount, “the state saves 10% of what they would have been paying if that student had been going into a public school,” he says.
Besides expanding the program to include families from nearly all economic backgrounds, state legislators also simplified the process to be eligible for a Choice Scholarship. They removed certain “tracks” or qualifications that families previously needed to meet.
“I used to joke with people that it takes a Ph.D. to understand who’s eligible,” Elcesser says. “The only way kindergarten kids were eligible were if they had a sibling who was already getting a voucher. By removing the tracks, not only does it open the door for additional families, but it simplifies the program.”
As pleased as he is with the expansion of the school choice program, Elcesser says there’s another goal to reach—making school choice available to 100% of Indiana families.
“I think there are seven or eight states now that have universal choice. Indiana has historically been leading the way, so now we want to catch up,” he says about his hope when the legislature makes its next biennial budget in 2025.
It’s a goal he’s been striving toward since 2008, when he started working for INPEA, which was then under the leadership of Glenn Tebbe.
“I feel very blessed,” Elcesser says. “People like Glenn Tebbe and others worked for many years to get us toward this point. I’m a small cog in a very large wheel, but when I go to bed at night, I feel like we’ve done something to make a difference in families’ lives. So, there’s a personal satisfaction in that. But we’re not done.”
There’s also one more goal he has, a reflection of all the years he dedicated to Catholic education since 1979—as a teacher of children with special needs, an elementary school teacher, a high school principal, and as superintendent of Catholic schools in the dioceses of Wheeling-Charlestown, W. Va., and Richmond, Va.
“We always have to be cautious that we protect some degree of our independence, and in particular that we protect our mission. I say all the time, there’s been a lot of give and take. Our schools take the state test, they do all this reporting to the state, and there’s regulations that come with it. But the line in the sand is always, ‘Don’t mess with our mission.’
“We’ve been able to protect that. We should be able to operate out of our faith, beliefs and values.” †
