School Funding Debate Ongoing 13 Years After Court Ruling (OH)

March 30, 2011

Students, parents, teachers and administrators agree the system used to fund Ohio’s public schools is broken.

"School funding is flawed, in my opinion, statewide," said Malcom Fowlkes, former principal of George Washington Carver Preparatory Academy, which closed June 3.

Fowlkes said there is a disparity between the funding for charter schools and traditional schools.

"Some of the money goes back to the home district, so we don’t even get all the money that the students would have," he said.

Jeff Anderson, Newark City Schools Treasurer, said he would bet that close to 700 other local school treasurers agree that something has to be done about DeRolph v. State of Ohio, in which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state school funding system unconstitutional in 1997.

Thirteen years later, Anderson said the burden is still on the local taxpayer.

"The legislature for the past 13 years has just chosen more or less to ignore that ruling from the State of Ohio Supreme Court. That’s wrong because continually it falls back on our local citizens and strictly on property taxes. That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not what the Constituion of Ohio says," Anderson said.

Anderson said a sales tax may be the answer or a combination of a sales tax, income tax and property tax.

Ohio’s School Funding Advisory Council is reviewing the Evidence-based School Funding Model adopted by the state in 2009. The Council consists of 28 members and six subcommittees. Subcommittee members include members of the full Council and appointed members.

The Learning Environments subcommittee is recommending to the full council that the evidence-based school funding formula use the average salary of Ohio teachers rather than the median salary, so the state does not come up more than $1 billion short.

The full council meets August and will report back to the Governor and the state legislature by November 30, if not earlier.

Mike Dawson serves on the School Funding Advisory Council.

"Last year, when they were doing the budget, they underinflated teacher salaries and by using the right number, it’s going to increase the cost by possibly more than a billion dollars," he said.

Dawson said he wants Ohioans to know the cost up front.

"When you fudge the numbers on the front end, it gives people no confidence in the model and I think it’s important that people have confidence in whatever model we use," he said.