Co-creator of Ohio's public school funding model pushes state to implement final phase

Yahoo

17-02-2025

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Former Ohio state Rep. John Patterson, co-author of Ohio's Full School Funding Plan — the final phase of which has an uncertain future in the next state budget — said in an online forum last week that the full funding is a necessity for local schools and a responsibility for the state.
Patterson put together what would later be called the Fair School Funding Plan with former House Speaker Bob Cupp in 2017, in an effort to bring about the 'adequacy' in public school funding demanded by the Ohio Constitution and four separate Ohio Supreme Court orders that the state properly fund public schools.
Because the school funding topic is a complicated one, Patterson said he and Cupp 'realized early on that we didn't have all the answers,' and needed to bring in others to help put together a plan that addressed the real costs of educating a student in Ohio.
'Not one person, not one group, it was a bipartisan effort,' Patterson said.
With the help Republicans like former state Rep. Gary Scherer and former state Sen. Peggy Lehner, plus former Democratic state Sen. Vernon Sykes, the pair worked to simplify the education funding model to true district costs. The effort would later be taken up by another bipartisan pair, state Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, and Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Westlake, in the following general assembly, where it was passed as part of the state budget.
Patterson and Cupp also put together a work group of treasurers and superintendents from across the state to pin down what districts needed from the state, and why each district's costs looked different.
'We wanted a diverse group so we could get an actual read on how schools are funded and where the money needs to be coming from, so that our kids could receive that quality education,' Patterson told a virtual forum last week, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Ohio.
The two leaders of the Fair School Funding Plan landed on a method that created a formula for districts, that would encapsulate not only the funding that all districts needed to survive, but also the extra things like special education, transportation, and the needs of low-income students.
The formula made sense to Patterson and Cupp because while a state legislature operates on budgets spanning only two years, schools districts were required to create five-year forecasts.
'Imagine your household, if you had to plan five years out, but you could only account for money in the first two years,' Patterson said. 'You would want to make sure that there was a formula in place so that your family could prosper for years three, four, and five. That's what we were trying to do.'
The Fair School Funding Plan, as Patterson and Cupp designed it, didn't mandate how districts should use the money, but focused on the actual costs of everything from bus transportation to extracurriculars, blending property valuations with income wealth in each individual school district.
'Every component of this Fair School Funding Plan meets the individual needs of that particular district; it's not dependent on anyone else,' Patterson said. 'If that's not adequate, I know what is.'
The first four years of the six-year phase-in have been implemented in previous General Assembly budgets, but this year's plan might meet some pushback, with GOP members of the Ohio House Finance Committee expressing concerns about continuing with the plan as budget talks continue in that chamber.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman already walked back some comments made about implementing the final phase of the plan, after he said the funding model was 'unsustainable.'
Democrats have noted issues with Gov. Mike DeWine's executive proposal for the budget, despite the fact that it recommends implementation of the final phase-in. But those issues are with the lack of inflationary 'inputs' in DeWine's proposal, with which Patterson also took issue. Updating the inputs for base costs and teacher salaries, among other inputs, is 'necessary to keep pace' with inflation, Patterson said.
'Because if we don't, it's going to create disruption in the formula, which means local taxpayers are going to pay more, the state gets off the hook, and that's not fair,' he said.
The debate over how the final phase of the plan will look is part of a 'tug-of-war' public education advocates are seeing with the state funding of public schools and the private school voucher program that now has near-universal eligibility levels in Ohio, and which DeWine's executive budget supports for universal eligibility.
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Susan Kaeser, education specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio said the private school voucher programs are 'a personal responsibility that is now on the public's shoulders without any of the safeguards that protect taxpayers or the private school consumer.'
According to LWV Ohio research of state data, the voucher programs have seen enrollment between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years increase by 3,700 students, while the spending on voucher expansion nearly tripled in the same time period.
'So the bulk of that (enrollment) increase went to students whose families had already decided and been able to commit their resources to enroll their kid in a private school,' Kaeser said at the forum.
The voucher program faces a legal challenge as the public school advocacy group Vouchers Hurt Ohio pursues a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, which supporters hope will result in the elimination of the program all together.
One of the school districts that's signed on to the lawsuit is the Richmond Heights City School District, which saw almost 20% of their nearly $14 million operating budget go to students headed to adjacent private schools in the 2018-2019 school year, according to Nneka Slade Jackson, president of the district's board of education. The district also struggled to get out from under the weight of being labeled 'failing,' and six defeated school levies that led to further financial instability.
For Slade Jackson, fighting for the public school funding and against the private school voucher program is 'a moral imperative.'
'It is an act of advocacy for our children, for our schools, for our future, and for our democracy,' she said.
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