District delays promised hires

YOUR SCHOOLS

Columbus City Schools promised voters that the district would use money from a levy that voters approved in November to hire 325 new employees in key areas over the next five years.

But a half-year later, the district is slowing its plan to fill those jobs, after state budget discussions indicate the district will receive less state money than district leaders expected.

The district emphasized that it’s not breaking its promise to add the 325 jobs by the 2020-21 school year. But it is postponing a plan

to fill 30 of those jobs by next school year, filling them instead by the 2020-21 school year.

Officials said the state is forcing the district’s hand, and that things could get worse before the state legislature settles on a plan this summer to close a two-year, $800 million funding gap.

Four of the delayed jobs were to provide more oversight in response to the district’s data-scrubbing scandal. They included a new internal auditor, and three “accountability staff to provide additional oversight to ensure data integrity,” according to a KidsOhio voter guide about the levy.

Other hires to be delayed will include social workers, nurses, information-technology staff, gifted and talented teachers

and others. Delaying the hires by three school years would save $2.2 million each year, or $6.6 million over three years, officials said.

“It’s a response to lowerthan-forecasted revenues, and being responsible,” Superintendent Dan Good said following a Wednesday meeting of the Board of Education’s finance committee. “You don’t want to indicate to the public that you’re bringing positions onboard, and then find yourself in a position this summer where the state revenue is less than you anticipate.”

School board member Mary Jo Hudson told Good and his budget staff to continue looking for non-personnel cuts to minimize the impact on levyrelated job hires.

“I think we should look at other alternatives, not just delaying these priorities,” Hudson said.

The district’s state-required financial forecasts include

hiring 103 new employees next school year, but it now projects 73. The district hired 39.5 “full-time equivalent” positions toward the 325 newemployee goal during this school year.

The uncertainty in the money coming from the state relates to the district’s state funding being “capped.” Columbus City Schools are supposed to be funded based on a per-pupil funding formula, but the district gets less than the formula calculates because the total amount is capped so that other districts can get more than the formula says they should. District Treasurer Stan Bahorek calculates the cap shortchanges the district by $87 million a year, or the equivalent of getting no per-pupil funding for 18,000 of its students.

Each year, capped districts such as Columbus are told by the state how much the cap will grow to allow them

to get closer to the correct formula amount. Bahorek had projected in October, before voters approved the 6.92-mill levy, that the district would get 7.5 percent more in state money, as it had in the previous two years.

But then the state fell on hard times. Gov. John Kasich has proposed that capped districts get just 5 percent more. The final amount will be determined this summer when lawmakers complete the next two-year state budget. But Kasich’s 2.5 percentage-point cut changes Columbus City Schools’ revenue forecast by tens of millions of dollars over five years.

The cash-balance projection for the 2020-21 school year went from a $2.5 million deficit to a deficit of more than $30 million, leading the district to prepare for spending cuts.