Ohio Continues Attack on Public Education

Opinion

In order to balance the state budget, the state government is throwing the public school baby out with the budget bathwater. As if cutting long term return of tax payers to the local districts were not enough, state political leaders are encouraging the anti tax crowd by suggesting that funding at the local level also be cut.

From a previous post: ”Gov. John Kasich has in the past told voters not to support local school levies. And last week, Senate President Keith Faber had a similar message:

“If you want to know what my message is from the property-tax adjustment, it’s to local colleagues: Don’t pass new property-tax levies….For those who say, ‘Oh no, you’re making it more difficult to raise property-tax levies,’ the response is: Are you for property-tax levies? Do you think that’s a good thing? I’m not.”

The legislature's recent action to increase school levy costs to property owners by 12.5% is another blow to local support.

Paul Hunter paulhunter45177@gmail.com

 The attached letter published in a local [Akron area] paper provides more insight to the issue.

 School districts losing money under state budget
 7/4/2013 - South Side Leader

To the editor:

What the Ohio General Assembly did last week to education is extremely troubling. While legislators are trying to fool the public into thinking that somehow they
increased money for education, in fact, school districts are receiving $515 million less than they received from the state three years ago.

Three out of four Ohio school districts have less state revenue than they did then, including Green ($1.4 million), Manchester ($1.3 million), Mogadore ($389,000),
Springfield ($1.1 million), Copley-Fairlawn ($2.8 million), Coventry ($760,000) and Revere ($3.5 million).

And these cuts don't include the additional money districts will be losing to charter schools, 70 percent of which will rate an F on the new report card. Currently,
every kid not in a charter school loses 6.5 percent of their state money because charters remove so much from districts. Nearly every dollar sent to a charter from a
South Side News Leader-area district goes to one that performs far worse than the district.

Finally, every district will be subject to losing money to private school vouchers, even if the school is highly rated.

In short, this budget represents an attack on public education. In the 2010-11 school year, 50 percent of the revenue for education came from the state - the first
time that's happened in three decades. Today, that number is back down to about 47 percent.

The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four times that the state's duty is to reduce the need for property taxes to pay for schools. This budget will continue to increase
the need. Since 2011, a record $1.3 billion in new levy money to fund operations have been before Ohio voters as property taxpayers continued to foot the bill for
our legislators' constitutional failure.

To add insult to injury, since the state decided to eliminate state support of property tax cuts in this budget, anyone who voted for it will have voted for what could
be the largest property tax increase in state history.

Stephen Dyer, Green

(Stephen Dyer is the current education policy fellow at Innovation Ohio, a Columbus-based think tank.)