We Checked What the Candidates Said at the Forum
On Monday, September 21, 2026, Noblesville Schools hosted a school board candidate forum run entirely by three Noblesville High School students, who wrote the questions and kept the time. All three candidates spoke — incumbents Joe Forgey and Misti Ray, who urged a yes vote on the referendum, and challenger Denise Dye. This page checks what all three of them said, against the certified ballot, the district's own state audits, and its own contracts.
Ten findings below, covering twelve separate statements. Six other claims held up on checking, and those are listed too.
How this was checked
Three ground rules, so you can judge the list rather than take it on trust.
- Only claims a document can settle. “It will be catastrophic” is a prediction and is not on this page. “Eighty-seven percent of our budget goes to people” is a number, and the audited statement of disbursements settles it.
- Primary sources, not coverage. The ballot comes from the state determination that approved it, not from a news article. The audit findings come from the audit reports. The teacher costs come from the negotiated agreement.
- The claims that survived are published too. Six things the incumbents said that you might expect a site like this to attack are, on checking, accurate. They are in What held up. A list that finds only errors is a list you should not trust.
Why Forgey accounts for most of the findings. Six of the ten are his, two are Ray's, one is shared and one is Dye's. That is not a grudge — it is a function of who said checkable things. Forgey made nearly every numeric claim of the night: the $25 million, the 87%, the 140 teachers, the audits. Ray spoke mostly in general terms, and a general statement cannot be falsified. If he is checked more here, it is because he offered more that could be checked, which is to his credit as a candidate even where the numbers are wrong.
And yes, we checked the challenger. Denise Dye is the candidate closest to this site's position on the referendum. Finding 10 is hers, and it gets the same treatment as the other nine.
1. “It stays the same”
“This referendum is not expanding anything. We're not hiring more people. We're not building anything. This just maintains all these beautiful programs… It stays the same.”
Joe Forgey, at 28:01 in the forum recording.
The certified ballot begins with the opposite word. Indiana fixes the wording of the question, and the Department of Local Government Finance approved Noblesville's on June 22, 2026. It reads:
“Shall Noblesville Schools increase property taxes paid to the school corporation for no more than eight (8) years for the purpose of funding safety and security measures in all buildings and maintaining and enhancing academic and educationally-related programs in response to reductions in property tax revenue by imposing a property tax rate that does not exceed $0.57 and results in a maximum annual amount that does not exceed $43,842,578.”
Three things in that sentence are not “the same” as what we pay now:
- The rate we pay today is 37¢. The ballot authorises 57¢ — about 54% higher.
- The Operating Referendum Tax Levy fund actually collected $21,864,975 in the district's 2025 fiscal year. The ballot's ceiling is $43,842,578 — roughly double.
- Even the district's own board resolution of August 18, 2026 raises the rate to 38.5¢ in 2027 and steps it up from there. Nothing in the district's plan holds the rate flat.
The programs may well stay the same. The tax does not, and the ballot is the only document that binds.
Ballot: DLGF Findings and Final Determination 26-015-REF, June 22, 2026. Current rate: Noblesville Schools — Referendum Fund. Levy collected: SBOA report 17240A, Statement of Receipts and Disbursements, FY2025 column.
2. “Not being asked to grow or increase anything”
“It's status quo. This referendum is not being asked to grow or increase anything. It is to keep status quo.”
Misti Ray, at 29:06 — sixty seconds after Forgey, and explicitly agreeing with him (“like Joe said”).
Same answer as above. The word “increase” is the second word of the ballot question. This is not a slip by one candidate; it is the framing both incumbents used, one after the other, and it is the single most important thing on this page. If you take nothing else from it, take this: read the ballot question itself before you vote, because it does not say what you have been told it says.
3. “Right down to the nickel and the dime”
“We go through auditing every two years. That's a several-day process. As your school board president, I've sat in on several audits, okay? And they get them right down to the nickel and the dime… There's no secrets here.”
Joe Forgey, at 32:44, answering a question about transparency.
Both of the district's two most recent state examinations came back qualified, with material noncompliance. That is the audit equivalent of “clean except for this.”
- July 2023 – June 2025, filed February 26, 2026 — seven months before this forum. Finding 2025-001: the district “failed to provide documentation to support that a physical inventory of affixed assets and equipment was performed” during the entire two-year period. The manual requires one at least every two years.
- July 2021 – June 2023, the period when Forgey was board president. Two findings. Late payments producing penalties and interest in three of thirty-eight sampled claims; and funds carrying cash balances below zero — a finding the report notes “appeared in the prior year report” as well.
- The federal single audit for 2023–2025 records a significant deficiency in controls over special-education contracting, and answers its own summary question “Auditee qualified as low-risk auditee?” with No.
There is also less detail under audit than the phrase implies. The audited statement is cash receipts and disbursements by fund, on a regulatory basis, with an adverse opinion as to generally accepted accounting principles — which is routine for Indiana school reporting and not a scandal. But the schedules people actually want, including the fund-by-fund breakdown, payables and capital assets, are each marked (Unaudited) in the report itself.
None of this is fraud, and this page does not suggest it is. It is a direct answer to a candidate who offered the audits as proof that nothing needs explaining.
SBOA compliance examination 17240S (2023–2025) · SBOA financial and single audit 17240A · SBOA compliance examination 82887S (2021–2023). All three mirrored locally in the site's source archive.
4. “Eighty-seven percent of our budget goes to people”
“Eighty-seven percent of our budget goes to people. And so, twenty-five million is going to have to — twenty-five million is going to have to come out of that eighty-seven percent. And that's going to be teachers and programs.”
Joe Forgey, at 28:34.
That is a statement about one fund, used to describe the whole budget. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, the audited total across every fund was $256,128,708. The Education Fund — the one where most spending really is salaries and benefits — disbursed $73,275,441, or 28.6% of that. Add the Referendum and Operations funds and you reach $124,727,554, still under half.
The argument this number is doing work for is: the money can only come out of teachers. That conclusion needs the 87% to describe the budget. It describes about a quarter of it.
In fairness: “about 85–87% of the Education Fund goes to salaries and benefits” is a standard and accurate thing for a school official to say. The error is the denominator, not the statistic. A listener with no way to check hears that seven-eighths of everything is untouchable.
Audited totals: SBOA report 17240A, Statement of Receipts, Disbursements, Other Financing Sources (Uses) and Cash and Investment Balances — Regulatory Basis.
5. “About 140 teachers out of 700 teachers”
“Now, what are we going to do if it doesn't pass? It'll be catastrophic. I think this comes around to about 140 teachers out of 700 teachers.”
Joe Forgey, at 28:01.
That figure does not reconcile with the $25 million he cited thirty seconds later. The negotiated agreement puts the 2024–25 teacher salary range at $48,000 to $92,000. Loaded with the retirement contributions the district pays (10.1%, being the 7.1% employer rate plus the 3% member share the contract says the Corporation covers), payroll taxes, and a conservative floor for the district's 81.4% share of the health premium, a teacher costs the district roughly $85,000 to $100,000 all in.
| If a teacher costs | 140 teachers saves | Share of $25M | Positions needed for $25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| $85,000 | $11,900,000 | 48% | 294 |
| $100,000 | $14,000,000 | 56% | 250 |
140 teachers is about half of $25 million. Closing that gap on staff alone would take somewhere near 250 to 290 positions. So either the $25 million is wrong, or the 140 is — and both came out of the same answer.
This error runs in his favour, not ours. If the referendum genuinely funds $25 million of people, the staffing consequence he described is understated, not exaggerated. The point is not that he inflated the threat. It is that a number offered to a room as the cost of voting no was not derived from anything — he prefaced it with “I think” — and 140 happens to be 20% of 700, which looks like the referendum's 20% share of operating funding applied to the wrong quantity. Twenty percent of the operating budget is not twenty percent of the teachers, because teacher pay is only part of that budget.
Salary range: Noblesville Schools / NSEA agreement 2023–2025, Article A. Retirement: same agreement, Article D, with the INPRS employer rate for calendar 2026. Arithmetic reproducible with verify-forum-claims.js in the site's source archive.
6. Asked about the 2018 money, he answered about COVID money
Denise Dye had just said she wanted an audit to answer a specific question: where the money from the 2018 referendum went. Forgey's reply, in the middle of his answer on transparency:
“And any extra money that we got in during that COVID time was spent on things that had to be done to cover the cost of everything that went on then. Everything went up… That money that came in was not spent nifariously.”
Joe Forgey, at 32:44. (“Nifariously” is how the recording renders it.)
Those are two different pots of money. Federal pandemic relief and the 2018 local operating referendum are separate funds with separate rules and separate reporting. Defending one does not address the other.
It also would not have been answered by the audits he pointed to. A state compliance examination tests whether the district followed the accounting manual. It does not ask whether referendum dollars went where voters were told they would go. That question is still open, and it is a fair one to put to any candidate between now and November 3.
7. The $100,000 welder
“There are students graduating high school that just graduated last year, going into positions making a hundred thousand dollars a year, without going to college… they went through our CTE program, they got certified, they did all the things, and now they're a certified welder making a hundred grand a year.”
Misti Ray, at 45:47.
That is above the 90th percentile for every welder in Indiana. Federal wage data for the occupation statewide:
| Indiana welders | Annual wage |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile (entry level) | $38,410 |
| Median | $49,730 |
| 90th percentile | $74,880 |
| Claimed, one year out of high school | $100,000 |
$100,000 is roughly double the median and $25,000 clear of the 90th percentile — which includes welders with thirty years behind them. Individual exceptions exist; overtime, travel work and pipeline jobs can reach it. What does not exist is this as a normal outcome for a recent graduate, and it was offered to a roomful of parents as an ordinary result of a district program.
The career and technical program is genuinely good. It does not need this.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, welders, cutters, solderers and brazers (51-4121), Indiana, May 2025.
8. The two incumbents contradicted each other on test scores
22:24 — Forgey: “They are in the top five or ten percent in what we do academically… We've been in the top five or ten percent in all the standardized testing that we do.”
34:36 — Ray: “I don't care what the standardized test scores say, because that is also not the most important thing to the parents in our community… standardized tests are not a great way to measure.”
Twelve minutes apart, on the same stage, running on the same side. Neither statement is false on its own — Forgey's ranking claim checks out, and Ray is entitled to think tests are a poor measure. Together they are a problem, because the same evidence is decisive when it flatters the district and irrelevant when a challenger raises it.
Test scores are the proof in the sales pitch and a distraction in the cross-examination. Voters are entitled to notice.
9. Three smaller ones
- The audit happens every two years, or every year. Forgey said “We go through auditing every two years” and then, one sentence later, that “it's a standard state thing that happens every year.” The first is right: Indiana law puts school corporations on a biennial examination cycle.
- “It costs the schools forty-two thousand dollars.” No such figure appears in either examination report. It may be right; it is not published where he said it was.
- The wrong association. Forgey said Superintendent Hile was “just elected president of the state school board association.” Hile is president of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents for 2026–27. The Indiana School Boards Association is a different organisation. A small thing, said while vouching for someone's standing.
10. The challenger got the diploma requirements wrong
“We are not taking advantage of… the fact that you're not getting full English, you're not getting full math. You're only being required to have one year. I don't think that that's getting them ready for the workforce.”
Denise Dye, at 47:27, on the new state diploma.
The new Indiana Diploma requires four years of English and three and a half of math. The state's own published breakdown of the 42 credits:
| Subject | Credits required | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| English | 8 | Four years |
| Math (including Personal Finance) | 7 | Three and a half years |
| Science, technology and engineering | 7 | Three and a half years |
| Social studies | 5 | Two and a half years |
It is not a reduction, either. The old General Diploma required 4 math credits; the new baseline requires 7. On the specific thing she named, the requirement went up.
Her broader argument — that Indiana has set the bar too low, and that this is a state problem rather than a Noblesville one — is a fair position to hold and this page takes no view on it. The number she used to support it is wrong.
One more of hers, stated for completeness. Dye asked what happened to “the extra hundred million from 2018.” That rounds up. The 2018 measure raised the rate rather than creating it, so the additional revenue it produced is nearer $80–90 million across eight years. Her underlying question — where did it go, and what grew fastest — is one this site also thinks is unanswered. The round number invites a correction she does not need.
Why this is on the page. Dye is the candidate whose position on the referendum is closest to ours. Leaving her out would have made the other nine findings easier to wave away, and a fact-check that only ever lands on one side is not a fact-check. If she corrects this, we will say so here.
Source: Indiana Department of Education, The New Indiana Diploma: Earning Credits for SY 2025-2026.
What held up
Six claims from the two incumbents that we checked and could not fault. Several are things this site would have liked to be wrong.
| Claim | Finding |
|---|---|
| Forgey: Noblesville is “in the top five or ten percent” academically | Supported. District ILEARN proficiency in 2025 was 60.2% in English and 56.7% in math, against state averages of 40.6% and 42.1%. He is repeating the district's own framing, but it is not false. |
| Forgey: the state funds schools less now than in 2008 once adjusted for inflation | Broadly supported. Indiana per-pupil support is below its 2010 level in real terms, and the K–12 budget trails the 2009–10 cycle by several hundred million inflation-adjusted dollars. |
| Forgey: national groups from outside Noblesville are campaigning against this | True as stated. Americans for Prosperity, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is running against Indiana school referendums. It does not follow that local opposition is theirs — this site is one resident and is not funded by anyone — but the fact he asserted is a fact. |
| Ray: school bus transportation is not required by Indiana law | Correct. Indiana makes student transportation discretionary for school corporations. Special-education transportation written into a student's plan is a separate federal obligation. |
| Ray: Noblesville has had a referendum for sixteen years | Correct. The first operating referendum passed in May 2010 and was renewed in May 2016; the 2018 measure replaced and increased the 2016 one (DLGF referendum history). |
| Ray: a 99% graduation rate | Close enough that we are not making a case of it. The published district figure is 98%. One point, and we will not pretend that is a scandal. |
Where this could be wrong
Stated before anyone has to find it, as on every other page here.
1. The quotations come from an automatic transcript. The recording was transcribed by software, and that software is demonstrably imperfect — it renders the superintendent's name as “Dan Heil,” garbles at least one of Forgey's number-heavy sentences, and misattributes several speaker labels. Every quotation on this page was chosen because its meaning is unambiguous, but the wording of any single sentence could be off. If you intend to rely on an exact phrase, ask us for the recording and listen to it. We will send it.
2. “$25 million” is the district's figure, and we use it as given. The audited fund collected $21,864,975 in fiscal 2025, which is a twelve-month period straddling two calendar-year levies, so it is not the same quantity as an annual levy and we do not claim the district is overstating. Finding 5 tests the 140-teacher figure against the district's own $25 million, which is the fair comparison.
3. The teacher cost band is an estimate. The salary range and the retirement contributions are documented. The health premium is not — the district's 81.4% share is public, the dollars are not — so we used the contract's own older premium figure as a floor. If teachers cost more than $100,000 loaded, the 140 figure is further from $25 million, not closer. The conclusion moves in one direction only.
4. Finding 4 turns on what “budget” means. If Forgey meant the Education Fund, 87% is about right and the criticism is only that he did not say so. We think a listener in that room heard “the budget.” Judge it yourself.
5. Forgey's academic ranking claim rests on the district's own characterisation. We could not independently rank all Indiana corporations, so we marked it supported rather than verified. If someone produces the full distribution and it puts Noblesville outside the top ten percent, this page should be corrected against us.
The documents
Everything above, in one place. All of it is public.
- DLGF Findings and Final Determination 26-015-REF — the certified ballot question, June 22, 2026
- SBOA compliance examination 17240S — July 2023 to June 2025, filed February 26, 2026
- SBOA financial statement and single audit 17240A — same period, including the fund-by-fund statement
- SBOA compliance examination 82887S — July 2021 to June 2023
- Noblesville Schools — Referendum Fund — the current 37¢ rate, in the district's own words
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics — welders, Indiana, May 2025
- INPRS employer contribution rates — calendar 2026
The full forum recording and transcript, the three audit reports and the script that reproduces every calculation on this page are kept in the site's source archive. Ask and we will send any of it.
What to do with this
Not much of this page is about Joe Forgey or Misti Ray personally. Both have given this district a great deal of time, and the forum was a genuinely good event — three students wrote better questions than most adults would have.
The point is narrower. The case for a yes vote was made, twice, on the claim that nothing is going up. The ballot says otherwise, in the state's own fixed wording, and it is the ballot that binds for the next eight years.
Hear the other side first: the district's case is at noblesvilleschools.org/referendum.
Ready to vote?
Registration closes October 5, 2026; early voting runs October 6 – November 2. See How to Vote for the full Hamilton County schedule.
Sources and the full calculator: stopthenoblesvillereferendum.com · Vote NO on the Noblesville Schools operating referendum — Tuesday, November 3, 2026.