ARTICLE 8. Education

Section 1. Common school system

Section 1. Knowledge and learning, general diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it should be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual scientific, and agricultural improvement; and provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all.

Section 2. Common school fund

Section 2. The Common School fund shall consist of the Congressional Township fund, and the lands belonging thereto;

The Surplus Revenue fund;
The Saline fund and the lands belonging thereto;
The Bank Tax fund, and the fund arising from the one hundred and fourteenth section of the charter of the State Bank of Indiana;
The fund to be derived from the sale of County Seminaries, and the moneys and property heretofore held for such Seminaries; from the fines assessed for breaches of the penal laws of the State; and from all forfeitures which may accrue;
All lands and other estate which shall escheat to the State, for want of heirs or kindred entitled to the inheritance;
All lands that have been, or may hereafter be, granted to the State, where no special purpose is expressed in the grant, and the proceeds of the sales thereof; including the proceeds of the sales of the Swamp Lands, granted to the State of Indiana by the act of Congress of the twenty eighth of September, eighteen hundred and fifty, after deducting the expense of selecting and draining the same;
Taxes on the property of corporations, that may be assessed by the General Assembly for common school purposes.

Section 3. Principal and income

Section 3. The principal of the Common School fund shall remain a perpetual fund, which may be increased, but shall never be diminished; and the income thereof shall be inviolably appropriated to the support of Common Schools, and to no other purpose whatever.

Section 4. Investment and distribution

Section 4. The General Assembly shall invest, in some safe and profitable manner, all such portions of the Common School fund, as have not heretofore been entrusted to the several counties and shall make provision, by law, for the distribution, among the several counties, of the interest thereof.

Section 5. Reinvestment

Section 5. If any county shall fail to demand its proportion of such interest, for Common School purposes, the same shall be reinvested, for the benefit of such county.

Section 6. Liability of counties

Section 6. The several counties shall be held liable for the preservation of so much of the said fund as may be entrusted to them, and for the payment of the annual interest thereon.

Section 7. Trust funds

Section 7. All trust funds, held by the State, shall remain inviolate, and be faithfully and exclusively applied to the purposes for which the trust was created.

Section 8. Superintendent of public instruction

Section 8. There shall be a State Superintendent of Public Instruction, whose method of selection, tenure, duties and compensation shall be prescribed by law.

(History: As Amended November 7, 1972. The schedule adopted under the 1972 amendment to Article 8, Section 8. was stricken out by the November 6, 1984, amendment).

Updated: 25 Februrary 1999
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