Education groups criticize Kasich’s plan
The state budget doesn’t provide enough money for school transportation and makes painful cuts to tangible personal property tax reimbursements.
It caps funding to districts that need extra money to educate growing student populations, cuts districts that can’t afford it, and leaves most career-technical schools and all educational service centers with less money.
Oh, and something is wrong with the key component of the school-funding formula.
Those were the messages to lawmakers Wednesday from teachers unions and state public education associations in Ohio. But turning Gov. John Kasich’s twoyear education budget into a piñata doesn’t mean more money is going to fall out.
“We hear their problem and we understand it. There’s not hardly any extra money this year and we’re going to do the best we can with what we have,” said Rep. Robert Cupp, R-Lima, chairman of the subcommittee hearing education budget testimony. “That is just a reflection of reality this year.”
About 390 districts would lose state funding under Kasich’s plan, though 72 would lose less than $10,000.
Anthony Podojil, executive director of the Alliance for High Quality Education, a consortium of 70 districts, said a “strong case” can be made that the $6,000 base per pupil funding no longer represents true operating costs. Based on inflation, the figure should be $6,700 in 2019, he said.
The proposed funding is “inadequate,” said Scott DiMauro, a Worthington teacher and vice president of the Ohio Education Association. It “further erodes the state share of education spending and creates another list of winners and losers.”
Kasich’s proposal does increase overall school operating funds statewide, but Howard Fleeter, an economist and consultant with the Ohio Education Policy Institute, says the $150 million increase fails to keep pace with inflation.
The number of districts on the “guarantee,” meaning they are being artificially prevented from getting cut as deeply as the formula says they should, would jump from 133 this year to 321 in 2019.
“That is the thing that really jumps off the page to me,” Fleeter said.
Barbara Shaner, testifying on behalf of state associations representing school boards, superintendents and school treasurers, said she agrees with Kasich’s desire to direct more state money to districts with lower tax capacity, but she and Fleeter questioned whether the formula was properly doing that.
“There is no method in place for determining the cost of educating students,” Shaner said.
The state share index, a key piece of the formula that uses per-pupil property valuations and income to determine how much funding the state will cover for each district, is flawed and biased against rural districts, the education groups argued.
When the index goes down in 373 of 609 school districts, leaving the state covering 1.5 percent less of the total share across all districts, “there’s a weird thing going on,” Fleeter said.
Cupp said he also was struggling to understand it. “It’s got some quirks. We’re going to look at how that can be resolved.”
The Ohio 8 Coalition, which represents the state’s largest urban districts, urged lawmakers to improve transportation funding and give districts the ability to standardize when a school day begins and ends for charter and private schools that rely on district busing.
Adrian Allison, Canton Schools superintendent and co-chairman of Ohio 8, noted that Dayton must transport students to 31 different charter and private school buildings, some with different start and end times, in addition to 30 of its own buildings.
“The result is a system that is nearly impossible to achieve efficient routes, use of equipment, and most important of all, reducing the amount of time children spend on the bus,” Allison said.
Kasich’s budget would lower the minimum state share of transportation costs from 50 percent to 25 percent by 2019. Shaner said Kasich’s proposed reduction would hit 373 districts next year.
House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, questioned whether there would be money available, but said, “the transportation tweak, especially for some of my districts with large geographic areas, is a concern for me.”
The education associations and the state’s two primary teachers’ unions also opposed Kasich’s proposal to require teachers to complete business externships as part of their five-year license renewal process. Republican legislative leaders already have expressed opposition.
“Teachers recognize the importance of understanding the job skills that employers are seeking, but a requirement to work in an outside business is not necessary to achieve that understanding,” DiMauro said.