Ohio Schools Eye Big Cuts After Levy Defeats (OH)

November 4, 2010

Ohio voters defeated about half the 214 school levies on ballots, leaving some districts to contemplate closing schools and slashing bus routes, the Ohio School Boards Association said.

Preliminary election results show that 105 levies, or 49 percent, failed to get voter approval.

In Toledo, where voters Tuesday shut down a levy that would have raised about $22 million a year for the district, school board member Brenda Hill told The Blade the district could shrink from six high schools to two.

"We’ll probably end up with one high school on each side of town," Hill said Wednesday.

The failed levies in Toledo and elsewhere potentially put anything not mandated by the state as a core educational requirement — including sports — on the chopping block.

In southwest Ohio, The Cincinnati Enquirer reports the 18,700-student Lakota Schools — the state’s seventh-largest district — will drop high school busing following the fifth levy defeat in six tries.

The schools will trim $12 million beginning next school year, besides the $13 million they’ve already cut in programs and personnel.

"Everyone will be affected," Superintendent Mike Taylor said, "and our schools are facing some very challenging times."

Of the school levies on Ohio ballots, the Ohio School Boards Association says voters passed only a quarter of the 96 requests for new money to cover operating costs.

"Districts have cut and cut and cut, laid off people, and they’re at the point where they have to go back for new money," association spokesman Scott Ebright said.

Still, some school districts — including Kettering, near Dayton — won voter approval by trimming levies that had failed in the past, the association said.

"Considering the economy, the fact that over the course of 2010 we had a little over half of the tax issues pass, that’s good," Ebright said.