Update on School Funding


WILLARD: GOP senators toss out chance to fix school funding
By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 05:26 p.m. EDT, May 30, 2009
COLUMBUS: Republicans have been in charge of the Ohio Senate since 1985.
On Friday, they demonstrated that their reign has lasted at least one day too long.
Many of the same familiar faces who defied four rulings from the Ohio Supreme Court — that the way the state pays to educate its 1.8 million schoolchildren is unconstitutional — decided this year to make a flawed funding system even worse.

In unveiling their version of the two-year state budget, Senate Republicans rejected Gov. Ted Strickland’s education overhaul, known as the evidence-based model, and scrapped the current system as well.
They threw out everything.
Ohio does not have a funding formula at this point.
The amount of money flowing to each district in the next two years, under the Senate plan, would have nothing to do with the number of children enrolled, income from local property taxes, books, buses, teachers, impoverished, gifted or special education students.
No. The Senate Republican plan couldn’t care less that there are yawning disparities between rich and poor districts in this state or that one mill of property tax in one district raises tens of thousands of dollars, while in another, only pennies.
Their plan is simple, and most importantly, easy on the state wallet.
Each of Ohio’s 614 school districts would be on the ”guarantee,” with a sprinkling of new money as budgetary window dressing.
What is the guarantee?
It means that each district would get the same amount of money next year that it is receiving this year.
And Senate Republicans will throw in a 0.25 percent increase in funding the first year and a whopping 0.5 percent increase in the second for each and every district.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
So, why should anyone complain? No district is losing money and each district gets a little more each year.
Let’s start by looking at the current formula, which is unconstitutional, not due to its construct, but because the state has relied too heavily on local property taxes to fund it.
Under the current plan, in place since 1935 except for four years, state lawmakers and the governor establish a basic aid amount for each student that is paid through a combination of state dollars and local property taxes.
The more students enrolled, the more money a district receives. The fewer dollars the state kicks in toward the basic aid amount, the more reliant the formula is on local property taxes.
So enrollment matters, but not under the Senate plan, except in a smattering of districts with rapid student growth, where those schools will be limited to a 2 percent increase in the next two years.
Even before the senators decided to throw out any semblance of a funding formula, more than half of the school districts in Ohio were on a ”hold-harmless” guarantee.
This is a symptom of flaws in the funding formula, not a solution.
Governors and lawmakers are loath to actually reduce state funding to schools, so they appease local officials with a guarantee.
There is a direct correlation, now and historically, between the state shirking its constitutional duties on school funding and the rise in the number of school districts on a guarantee.
After the Ohio Supreme Court ruled a fourth time that the funding formula is unconstitutional, the justices decided to remove themselves from the case. Almost immediately, state lawmakers and then-Gov. Bob Taft started to reduce the state share of school funding and shift the burden back to local property owners.
The number of school districts on the guarantee increased to about 350.
This is not a new phenomenon.
In the late 1960s, almost every school district in Ohio was on the guarantee. It was a result of lawmakers, beginning in 1946, reducing the state share of education funding from 50 percent to 30 percent.
Starting in the 1970s — after the state devised a new funding formula known as ”equal yield,” began phasing it in over a four-year period and then dismantled it — the number of districts on the guarantee shot up again.
GOP’s motivation
So why are Senate Republicans pursuing this funding policy?
First, they don’t have the money, or won’t find the dollars, to keep the current flawed formula on life support.
Secondly, they want to either kill or delay the implementation of Strickland’s overhaul for political purposes.
The governor ran in 2006 on the promise to fix the unconstitutional school-funding formula, and his evidence-based model represents the first time a state leader has attempted to put a true cost on educating a child rather than direct whatever dollars are available toward the education budget.
Granted, the governor and his supporters among House Democrats developed the new formula and proceeded to say it would be phased in over 10 years because funds are not currently available.
The governor also provided opponents with plenty of reasons to attack his ideas.
Problems with overhaul
Initially, his formula shifted more state funding to wealthy districts at the expense of the poor.
Also, Strickland’s efforts to keep the funding formula a secret allowed Republicans to claim they were not part of a hurried process to develop a historic plan.
And finally, one of the architects, University of Wisconsin Professor Allen Odden, told senators during budget hearings that the governor’s evidence-based model, which is based on teachers’ salaries, could be implemented on a per-pupil basis.
So, Senate Republicans also unveiled plans to create a ”Student Centered, Evidence-Based Funding Council,” which would be required to develop a per-pupil school-funding formula by September 2010.
Delay has always been a tactic for the status-quo Senate Republicans on school funding, and this is no different.
By calling for a new study, Republicans will not have to implement a new funding formula until after Strickland is re-elected (or defeated) next year and the results of the Democrats’ efforts to retain the majority in the Ohio House will be known.
In January 2011, there could be a Republican in the governor’s office and a GOP majority in the Ohio House.
After all, there are no guarantees in life except death, taxes and, currently, the brazen Senate Republican school-funding plan.

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Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.

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