Article 8. - Education.
Section 1. Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout
a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government;
it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all
suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural
improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system
of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and
equally open to all.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 with
the 1972 amendment to Article 8, Section 8 was stricken out by the
November 6, 1984, amendment)