Following a controversial $1.8 billion state education funding cut announced in 2011, Gov. John Kasich announced a new two-year school funding formula Thursday.
In a presentation to Ohio superintendents in Columbus, Kasich unveiled “Achievement Everywhere,” a new school-funding plan aimed at improving educational programs in less-developed counties so they can compete with other Ohio counties.
The new plan will provide $6.9 billion in General Revenue Funds and Lottery in fiscal year 2013, $7.4 billion in 2014 and $7.7 billion in 2015. Kasich said he intends to equalize the funding for each Ohio district.
The Achievement Everywhere plan provides $1.2 billion in total new funds during the next two years for primary and secondary education, according to an news release from Kasich’s office.
The new formula begins with “Core Opportunity Aid,” which involves providing additional funds to school districts based in part on their residents’ incomes and guarantees no district can receive less in state aid next year than it did in the current fiscal year.
The new plan allocates funds based on special education needs, English-language learners, early childhood programs, children in poverty and gifted and talented students. A total of $5,884 formula funds will go toward this part of the plan in 2013.
Another incentive of the plan is the Straight-A Fund, a $300 million fund of one-time grants to districts wanting to employ new strategies for helping students improve their achievement levels.
Critics of Kasich’s past budget cuts have argued reductions of that size would just shift responsibility for adequate school funding from the state to local taxpayers and would not be fair to Ohio schools, said Dale Butland, communication director of Innovation Ohio.
“The funding model for our schools that Kasich is intent on perpetuating is ultimately unsustainable, because you cannot ask school districts to go back to the levies to ask for money over and over again,” Butland said. “Under the Ohio Constitution, it’s the state’s responsibility to provide a fair education.”
According to an analysis from Innovation Ohio, $1.1 billion in local property and income tax levies have been used specifically for schools on local ballots since May 2011.
“At the time, Innovation Ohio, along with the state’s education community and many newspaper editorial pages, repeatedly warned that the Kasich cuts were simply shifting responsibility for school funding from the state to the local level,” said Innovation Ohio President Janetta King in a news release.
The two-year budget cut in Athens County included cuts of $8 million to education and $4 million to local government.
Athens City Schools Superintendant Carl Martin said he had to take drastic measures to bounce back from the cuts.
“The cuts prompted us to close (Chauncey) Elementary School and change a lot of operations in our district to try and come up with the savings,” Martin said.
“We also did a budget reduction. We also had to change employee health insurance to absorb those cuts.”
Butland argued that the state school districts have already been cutting the education’s budget, but in the long run, the model is unsustainable.
“They’ve gotten rid of teachers, administrators and done all the things the governor has recommended they do to save money, but it isn’t working,” Butland said. “At a time when we have to be educating young Ohioans to compete in the world of tomorrow, we cannot keep cutting back these academic programs. We cannot expect Ohio to compete with other states with this model.”
az346610@ohiou.edu
