Push is on to plan for school funding
Hearings on companion bills also in the works
An ambitious plan to push a revamped school-funding plan through the Ohio legislature by the end of the year will be launched after Election Day.
The House and Senate will hold hearings on fast-tracked companion bills at the same time.
“We’ll be working simultaneously to move this as fast as we can,” said Sen. Vernon Sykes, an Akron Democrat who will sponsor the Senate version along with Republican Peggy Lehner of Kettering.
Lawmakers are expected to return to Columbus after the Nov. 3 election for a lame duck session before the legislative term ends Dec. 31, creating a short timeline to work on the complex bill.
“That’s my greatest concern. Lame duck is short as it is, but it’s particularly short this year,” Lehner said. “We would like to get it done this year, but whether or not we can? We’ll see. I think it’s possible.”
Both Lehner and one of the House cosponsors, Rep. John Patterson, D-jefferson, are leaving the General Assembly at the end of the year because of term limits.
Glitches in the proposed formula have caused delays in launching the long-shot effort.
For the second time in as many weeks, legislators were forced to cancel a news conference to detail the proposal for distributing tax dollars to Ohio’s 600-plus public school districts.
Lehner and Sykes were to introduce their Fair School Funding Plan at a Statehouse briefing with reporters Wednesday.
The legislation will be a companion to the latest version of House Bill 305, which Patterson and Rep. Gary Scherer, R-circleville, were to outline at a similar event postponed earlier this month.
Lawmakers said simulations revealed some districts would receive less state aid than intended, requiring some “corrections.”
“There were a few changes we needed to make,” Sykes said. “We will be moving forward as soon as those corrections are made.”
The legislation marks the latest effort by the General Assembly to address a 1997 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court which found the state’s schoolfunding system unconstitutional. The high court reaffirmed that initial ruling three more times, most recently in 2002.
The goal is to have a new funding formula in place before lawmakers being working on the state’s two-year budget in early 2021.
Lawmakers said the new bill seeks to ensure that funds are distributed equitably to school districts and will also increase state aid for student transportation and educational service centers.
District-by-district breakdowns of state aid — which can make or break a funding plan — will be released as soon as corrections are made to the bill.
“We got the simulations back (Tuesday) for the first time,” Lehner said. “When we sat down and spent six hours going over them, we found enough little glitches where something didn’t add up or wasn’t quite right and we decided we didn’t want to hand those out. And if we weren’t going to hand out the numbers, which is what everyone wants to see, there wasn’t any point to having the press conference.”
Patterson said lawmakers intended to protect school districts that lose students through open enrollment from getting less state aid as the new formula is phased in, but simulations showed that wasn’t happening.
“To remove that funding and to fund where kids are educated could really create a jolt in some districts’ funding, Patterson said.
School districts and education advocates are cautiously optimistic.
“We hope to get the ball rolling again on the school-funding formula,” said Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
“We’re still waiting to see how the simulations look, but we need to have a funding formula, whether it’s perfect now or not, we need a funding formula we can start working from so that schools can start getting some stability again.”
With the state likely facing a budget shortfall next year because of the pandemic-sparked recession, it’s likely that lawmakers could approve a new funding formula but not fully pay for it for several years.
Jennifer Hogue, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association, said the proposed changes would be an improvement and “meeting the needs of students, and providing schools stability over time, will be huge” for local districts. ccandisky@dispatch.com @ccandisky