Bill Phillis: Why Do Ohio Republicans Hate Public Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bill Phillis: Why Do Ohio Republicans Hate Public Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bill Phillis: Why Do Ohio Republicans Hate Public Schools?

Bill Phillis is a retired state education official who writes frequently about the Republican war against public schools and against the education provisions of the state constitution. He created the Ohio Coalion for Equity and Advocacy of School Funding to publicize his campaign for equitable funding and his opposition to privatization.

He writes:

SENATE PRESIDENT HUFFMAN: THE EDUCATION IN OHIO NEEDS TO BE STUDENT-OR USER-BASED, NOT INSTITUTION-BASED

The Senate President, in response to the Universal Voucher bill (HB 290), is quoted in the May 9 Gongwer, as saying:

“The education in Ohio needs to be student-or user-based, not institution-based.” The Ohio constitution (Article VI, section 2) requires the legislature to secure and fund a thorough and efficient system of common CONTINUE READING: Bill Phillis: Why Do Ohio Republicans Hate Public Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland com

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland.com

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one

By Other Voices

As a student at a reputedly failing school, I will say emphatically that our public schools deserve support. As we look to determine the future of education, we must take a step back and decide what we want out of the system. There is more to education than an ill-conceived system of state testing. Public education exists to instill republican virtues in our people. We need this now more than ever.

Public schools have been branded as failing and stripped of funding by bizarre school-choice schemes. If a man has a broken leg, you don’t get him walking again by breaking the other leg. EdChoice, under the pretense of rescuing students from failing schools, has instead defunded those same schools rather than supporting vouchers directly. Our lawmakers must consider: If we focused instead on making meaningful improvements to the public education system which has served our state so well, would there be a need for EdChoice?

Visit Cleveland Heights High School. It is not failing. Nor is it perfect, for the vouchers have made sure of that. It is time that America rediscovers its republican virtues, the source of our strength, and the schools which gave them to us.

Kenji Sakaie,

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland.com

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget

This week in my school district in Cleveland Heights-University Heights, Ohio, parents and public school supporters are going through a quiet ritual. People have been scrambling to write and submit legislative testimony. Some people are submitting written testimony; others are driving two and a half hours to Columbus, sitting in the hearing room and driving home in the dark. The Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee is holding hearings on the state’s next biennial budget and considering a new—desperately needed—school funding plan that has now been folded into the budget bill, which must be passed by June 30.

What is happening is a big deal.  Last fall, a new $2 billion school funding plan was passed by the Ohio House by a vote of 87-9, but the Ohio Senate let the bill die at the end of the session. Now that plan has been folded into the state budget. The House has already passed the budget—including the Fair School Funding Plan—but the Senate is just now holding hearings. If you read some of the testimony being submitted, you might imagine what’s going on in Ohio would get coverage in the state’s big newspapers, but most of them have been bought out by Gannett-Gatehouse Media or Advance Media, companies that have reduced the number of reporters.  Right now not enough people are paying attention to a debate about whether the Legislature will repair the services our state is currently failing to provide for 1.6 million students in Ohio’s 610 public school districts at the same time the state continues to expand school vouchers at public schools’ expense.

I am going to share some of my own testimony and the testimony from others who are members of the Heights Coalition for Public Education. You can find copies of each of these documents in the Ohio Senate Education Committee’s document archive for May 4, 5, and 6.  I will date each reference.

My own testimony (May 6) summarizes the issues at stake in this particular Ohio budget CONTINUE READING: Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

New Statewide Campaign Pressures Ohio Senate to Pass School Funding Reform in FY22-23 State Budget | janresseger

New Statewide Campaign Pressures Ohio Senate to Pass School Funding Reform in FY22-23 State Budget | janresseger

New Statewide Campaign Pressures Ohio Senate to Pass School Funding Reform in FY22-23 State Budget

On Wednesday, four key organizations announced ALL in for Ohio Kids, a statewide campaign to demand that the Ohio Senate will pass a major a new school funding formula as part of the FY 2022-23 state budget.

The new coalition brings together four organizations: the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio Federation of Teachers, representing public school teachers; the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, pulling together public school parents and community members; and Policy Matters Ohio, adding the weight of complex policy expertise.

A new school funding plan, developed over several years, was passed on April 21st by the Ohio House of Representatives as part of the FY 2022-2023 state budget and submitted to the Ohio Senate. The Ohio Legislature must, by law, come up with a compromise by June 30.

With Ohio’s Republican supermajority House and Senate, you might suppose that members of the Ohio Senate would simply affirm the proposal forwarded by their colleagues in the House. You would be wrong. While the plan was originally sponsored by and developed under the guidance of House Speaker Bob Cupp and passed by the Ohio House in a stand alone bill in December by a vote of 87-9, the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Matt Dolan refused to bring the House bill forward for a vote by the full Senate. Therefore, the bill died at the end of the FY 20-21 legislative session.

The New All In for Ohio Kids Campaign and Policy Matters’ Wendy Patton Release Major Report

Outlining Ohio’s urgent need for the Fair School Funding Plan, Policy Matters’ state fiscal expert Wendy Patton released a position paper as part of the launch of the All in for Ohio Kids Campaign: “For many years Ohio lawmakers have provided neither sufficient nor fair CONTINUE READING: New Statewide Campaign Pressures Ohio Senate to Pass School Funding Reform in FY22-23 State Budget | janresseger

10th Period: Let's Talk Charter Schools | National Education Policy Center

10th Period: Let's Talk Charter Schools | National Education Policy Center

10th Period: Let's Talk Charter Schools

Let's discuss charter schools -- a topic you've seen a lot of on this blog over the years, but has kind of gone away recently for obvious (COVID) and non-obvious (Vouchers/School Funding) reasons.

Despite House Bill 2, which was supposed to slim down our notoriously poor-performing charter school sector and the closure of the nation's largest online school -- ECOT -- which closed because the school literally stole hundreds of millions of tax dollars to educate kids they never educated, we are currently spending more on charter schools than any other year on record. 

By a mile.

According to the latest Charter School funding report from the Ohio Department of Education, we are set to spend $999.7 million. The previous record was $955 million from the 2015-2016 school year -- the high-point of the ECOT years.

Despite this massive recent increase (an extraordinary $111 million jump ... over two years), it's not because we've had more students attending charters than ever. 

No. That record remains the 2013-2014 school year when 122,130 students attended charters. 

It's because Ohio politicians have continued bumping up the per pupil amounts flowing to charters. So now kids in Ohio charters, on average, get nearly $8,500 per pupil in state aid -- about double what that same kid would receive in a local public school.

As I've recounted for more than a decade, because of the way we fund charters, that means that local property taxes have to subsidize charter school kids.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in Rocket Science to understand that if you're removing $8,500 in state aid from a district for a kid the district was only getting about half of that from the state to educate that the difference has to come from somewhere.

This year, that subsidy is slated to be $148 million. And in some districts, it's really high. Like in CONTINUE READING: 10th Period: Let's Talk Charter Schools | National Education Policy Center

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams

Apparently, the voucher schools were embarrassed by the Ohio study showing that kids who use vouchers lose ground academically.

There were two ways to respond to that finding: 1) improve instruction in the voucher schools by requiring them to hire certified teachers; 2) obscure the data.

The voucher lobby chose the second route.

The Republican-dominated legislature is now vastly expanding the state’s failing voucher program. But a few years ago, it decided that voucher schools would no longer be required to give the same exams that students in public schools are required to take. The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute worried about the change, because it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw comparisons between students in public schools and their peers in private and religious schools.

That’s the goal.

Many other states that offer vouchers allow those schools CONTINUE READING: Ohio: Voucher Students Are Not Required to Take State Exams | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will Ohio Senate Undermine Fair School Funding Plan By Burying Changes in Fine Print of the State Budget? | janresseger

Will Ohio Senate Undermine Fair School Funding Plan By Burying Changes in Fine Print of the State Budget? | janresseger

Will Ohio Senate Undermine Fair School Funding Plan By Burying Changes in Fine Print of the State Budget?

The Ohio House of Representatives is, thankfully, being persistent in trying to pass a new, adequate, and equitable public school funding formula. Ohio educators and parents will remember that on December 2 of last year, the Ohio House passed the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan by an overwhelming margin of 87-9, but the bill died at the end of the 133th legislative session, after the Ohio Senate Finance Committee refused to bring the plan to a vote.

On February 3, 2021, the Fair School Funding Plan was reintroduced in the 134th General Assembly as HB 1. On Tuesday, the plan was embedded in the House’s FY 2022-2023 proposed Ohio budget bill (House Bill 110).

The plan has been thoroughly vetted.  It was developed over several years by a large group of experts and stakeholders and then further improved to emphasize equity by additional experts during a year of revisions before the House considered the plan during 2020.

Why is revision of our state’s school funding plan so urgently important?  From the time of the founding of our nation, public education and the franchise have been understood as two central institutions at the heart of American democracy. Through Reconstruction and the fight for equality and civil rights in the mid-20th century, our society has made strides toward ensuring an educated citizenry and protecting the rights of all children, but we have never fully lived up to the promise of educational justice for all. For generations there has been CONTINUE READING: Will Ohio Senate Undermine Fair School Funding Plan By Burying Changes in Fine Print of the State Budget? | janresseger

Beware: Here Is How to Wreck Your State’s Public Schools | janresseger

Beware: Here Is How to Wreck Your State’s Public Schools | janresseger

Beware: Here Is How to Wreck Your State’s Public Schools

Many state legislatures are currently considering new private school tuition vouchers or planning to expand long running voucher programs, tuition tax credit vouchers, and education savings account vouchers. Ohio provides a stark warning about the potential damage of rapidly growing school privatization at public expense.

In a column in Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, Peter Robertson examines how the growth of publicly funded private school tuition vouchers is increasingly sucking up the state funding Ohio supposedly provides for its public schools:

“According to the Ohio Department of Education’s first February Foundation Funding Report (Robertson’s article contains a link to the Excel spreadsheet from the Ohio Department of Education.), districts will spend $162 million this school year on these private school vouchers… An analysis last year by News5 Cleveland found that nearly two-thirds of voucher recipients had not previously been students in the public district schools—they were private school students who had not received state funding for their tuitions, and now do.”

Robertson was previously an administrator in the Cleveland Public Schools and later a school board member in Shaker Heights. “He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the role of online learning in educational change.”

Ohio’s EdChoice Vouchers are funded by a legislative scheme called “the school district CONTINUE READING: Beware: Here Is How to Wreck Your State’s Public Schools | janresseger

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers?

As we begin 2021, there has been troubling coverage about new voucher programs popping up in state legislatures. This is despite that Betsy DeVos is gone and that President Joseph Biden is a strong supporter of the institution of public schools. And in states like Indiana, and Ohio, where privatized school vouchers have been in place for decades, we can also watch pressure for their expansion.

Earlier this week, Bill Phillis, Ohio’s longest and best informed proponent of public schools and the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, sent around a troubling article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette describing a bill being considered by the Indiana House Education Committee for the radical expansion of an already enormous publicly funded private school tuition voucher program in Indiana, Ohio’s neighbor:

“The proposed bill expands the $172 million a year voucher program to allow a family of four earning as much as $145,000 a year to qualify for vouchers. Median household income in Indiana is about $60,000 a year. The bill also eliminates income limits on the size of the voucher awards. Currently, a family of four earning up to $48,000 a year is limited to a voucher worth 90% of per-student state funding for the school corporation in which the family resides. At $60,000 a year in household income, the voucher drops to 70%. Four-person families earning up to $96,000 a year qualify for 50% of per-student funding. But HB 1005 CONTINUE READING: What Is at Stake when ALEC, the State Policy Network, The Buckeye Institute and EdChoice Lobby for Vouchers? | janresseger

Why Does the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Control Education Policy in Ohio? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why Does the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Control Education Policy in Ohio? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why Does the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Control Education Policy in Ohio?

Writing in ohiocapital.com, Jeanne Melvin and Denis Smith denounced the central role that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute plays in directing education policy in Ohio. TBF is the think tank of the Ohio Republican Party; that party has controlled the state in recent years. It is curious that TBF directs education policy in Ohio since TBF is based in Washington, D.C.

Melvin is a parent activist, and Smith worked for the Ohio Department of Education.

In Ohio, TBF has been a strong advocate for high-stakes testing and school privatization. It has pushed charter CONTINUE READING: Why Does the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Control Education Policy in Ohio? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio Senate Killed New School Funding Plan: Now We Hear That Money Doesn’t Matter | janresseger

Ohio Senate Killed New School Funding Plan: Now We Hear That Money Doesn’t Matter | janresseger

Ohio Senate Killed New School Funding Plan: Now We Hear That Money Doesn’t Matter

Ohio Auditor Keith Faber explained on Tuesday that, “The Auditor of State’s Office recently completed a performance audit for the Ohio Department of Education.” Faber says that the purpose is to make recommendations about “economy, efficiency, and/or effectiveness in the areas reviewed…”

One of the subjects of the new report from the Ohio Auditor’s office is the correlation of school districts’ expenditure per pupil with their school performance as measured by standardized tests.  Here, from the Performance Audit Summary, is what the Auditor discovered: “Conclusion: Expenditure per pupil has a loose association with Achievement in Ohio, particularly at the high performing districts.  As total district spending increases, there is no single expenditure category driving this increase.”  Later in the body of the report, the Auditor states: “The analyses in this section indicate that it is not necessary for districts to spend more to get better results. The data show that lower spending districts can achieve at the same level as higher spending districts, a point which parents and taxpayers should take into consideration in their personal decision-making surrounding financial and performance issues in their district. ODE and LEAs should consider if there is a point of diminishing returns in spending, where additional district revenue and expenditures will not necessarily increase student success.”

The Plain Dealer‘s Emily Bamforth digs deeper, explaining to readers that one purpose of the Audit was to discover which practices in high spending school districts are most essential for CONTINUE READING: Ohio Senate Killed New School Funding Plan: Now We Hear That Money Doesn’t Matter | janresseger

Laura Chapman: Charters in Ohio Shaking the PPP Money Tree | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Charters in Ohio Shaking the PPP Money Tree | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Charters in Ohio Shaking the PPP Money Tree

Our reader Laura Chapman lives in Ohio. She contacted NPE Execurive Director Carol Burris to find out which Ohio charter schools asked for and received money from the Paycheck Protection Program, even though they already received funding allotted to public schools; even though they lost no income, unlike the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that were closed by the pandemic and had NO income; even though public schools were not alllowed to apply for PPP funds. Under the CARES Act, the average public school received an average of $134,500. Charter schools for their share of that money, plus qualified to double dip into the PPP funds,, thanks to their skilled lobbyists.

Chapman writes:

Diane, You beat me to it. I found the headline this morning: “Charter’s PPP loan called into question. School gave shareholder company a $10M bonus.” That report from Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic (Dec 19, 2020) referred to Primavera, an online charter school based in Chandler. “The school received “a PPP loan of nearly $2.2 million, the largest forgivable loan among the 132 Arizona charter schools that obtained them. https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf19/AZ_AR.pdf

This scam is about to be repeated if more PPP money is allocated for so-called public charter schools now reinvented as small businesses.

I have been looking at the first round of Paycheck CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman: Charters in Ohio Shaking the PPP Money Tree | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why the New “Fair School Funding Plan” Matters for One Ohio School District: Will the Ohio Senate Let It Die? | janresseger

Why the New “Fair School Funding Plan” Matters for One Ohio School District: Will the Ohio Senate Let It Die? | janresseger

Why the New “Fair School Funding Plan” Matters for One Ohio School District: Will the Ohio Senate Let It Die?

In Ohio, the state senate is refusing even to consider a new school funding plan, developed over a period of several years to replace the old school funding system that has become progressively unworkable over the past decade.  Last Thursday, the Ohio House of Representatives passed the proposed new plan by a huge margin: 84-8.  But the Ohio Senate Finance Committee has not even chosen to hold open hearings on its own companion bill, which was introduced early last month as Senate Bill 376.  The current biennial legislative session will end on December 31, and without consideration by the Ohio Senate and passage by that date, the Fair School Funding Plan will die.

If the Ohio Senate refuses to pass this bill, it will be merely one more piece of proof that the incoming senate president, Matt Huffman, and Matt Dolan, who chairs the senate’s finance committee, are committed to supporting children in private and religious schools with publicly funded vouchers at the expense of the 1.6 million children and adolescents who are enrolled in our state’s public schools.

The testimony I submitted last month to the Ohio House Finance Committee on behalf of the Heights Coalition for Public Education details why passage of the new plan is so important to CONTINUE READING: Why the New “Fair School Funding Plan” Matters for One Ohio School District: Will the Ohio Senate Let It Die? | janresseger

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die?

The Ohio House Finance Committee voted unanimously (32-0) on Wednesday to refer Substitute House Bill 305, the proposal for a new Fair School Funding Formula, to the full Ohio House for approval. And late yesterday afternoon, the Ohio House of Representatives passed the bill by huge margin: 84-8.

The Ohio Senate, however, is dragging its feet on Senate Bill 376, the companion bill. Plain Dealer reporter Laura Hancock quotes Senator Matt Dolan, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, hinting that he will not bring SB 376 to for a vote by his committee:  “I remain hesitant to pass this… There are still studies that need to be done. I think it’s going to be difficult to pass this out, out of the context of a state budget.”  Senator Dolan has said that he doesn’t want to enact a plan that will eventually cost a lot of money without having the money up front.

The authors of the new school funding plan know the legislature currently lacks the money to pay for the plan’s full implementation, which is why they prescribe a six-year phase in. The authors describe it as a blueprint for an equitable and adequate system.

I don’t know anybody other than Senator Matt Dolan—and likely Senator Matt Huffman, the incoming Senate President—who believes more studies are needed before we know how the plan is designed to work. Representatives Bob Cupp and John Patterson built the plan upon at least three years of study by experts. The House has held a number of hearings since the the plan was originally introduced in the spring of 2019 and incorporated further adjustments to CONTINUE READING: Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Will the Biden Administration Provide Leadership to Address Long School Funding Crisis? | janresseger

Will the Biden Administration Provide Leadership to Address Long School Funding Crisis? | janresseger

Will the Biden Administration Provide Leadership to Address Long School Funding Crisis?

Here in Ohio, during the current lame duck session, legislators are considering a new school funding formula. The Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan has been in the making for almost two years (See here and here.),  but even now as the plan comes to a vote before December 31, the end of the current legislative session, it has been difficult to build a wave of political will for justice for Ohio’s children.

The Ohio Legislature appears split. There is support in the Ohio House for fairer and more generous school funding, but key members of the Ohio Senate want to protect private school voucher programs and delay help for the state’s students in public schools. Even if the Fair School Funding Plan passes, a solution may be illusory.  How will it ever be funded? After a series of state tax cuts early in the current decade and in the midst of a COVID-19 recession, even if the new plan is set in place, making it operational will require a six-year phase in while legislators look for the necessary funds to pay for it.

The mere release of the proposal for the Fair School Funding Plan helped call the public’s attention to the state’s utter failure in recent years to distribute constitutionally mandated state funding fairly across Ohio’s public schools. Eighteen months ago, when the plan was released, we learned that 503 of the state’s 610 school districts had been either capped or on hold-harmless guarantee. These categories mean that despite changes in the number of students they serve or the special needs of their student populations, 503 school districts had, for years in many cases, been receiving the same amount of state funds they got last year and the year before that. Then, because of a shortage of state funds, the biennial state budget for FY 20-21, froze formula state school aid for every one of Ohio’s school districts at the FY 2019 CONTINUE READING: Will the Biden Administration Provide Leadership to Address Long School Funding Crisis? | janresseger

Ohio Legislative Leader Rams Through Voucher Changes that Hurt Students in Poor, Title I Schools | janresseger

Ohio Legislative Leader Rams Through Voucher Changes that Hurt Students in Poor, Title I Schools | janresseger

Ohio Legislative Leader Rams Through Voucher Changes that Hurt Students in Poor, Title I Schools

This post has been updated. The Ohio House has now passed SB 89.

The Ohio Senate is up to its old tricks.

Five years ago right at the end of a spring session of the Ohio Legislature, a group of state senators added a long amendment to House Bill 70, which was about expanding the number of full service, wraparound community learning centers—schools with medical and social services located right in the school. The amendment had nothing to do with the subject of the original bill. The amendment’s purpose was to establish the state takeover of the school district in Youngstown and set up a procedure for state takeovers of other so-called “failing” school districts. A deal had been cut. No opponent testimony was permitted. The Ohio Senate passed the amended HB 70 and sent it back for quick approval by the Ohio House. Within hours, Governor John Kasich had signed it, and without public input, an appointed Academic Distress Commission supplanted the elected school board in Youngstown.

This time the subject is vouchers.

Last spring, just as everything shut down due to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, both houses of the Ohio Legislature debated changes in the EdChoice voucher program and came up with two separate bills. EdChoice eligibility is currently described by legislators as “performance-based.” The state designates EdChoice schools by these schools’ low ratings on the state’s school district report card, which everybody agrees is flawed. Last spring the program was expected to double in size. At angry hearings, school districts complained because EdChoice vouchers are funded through something called “the school district deduction.” The House plan would have funded the vouchers out of the state budget; the Senate plan kept the school district deduction.

When COVID-19 shut everything down and House and Senate were unable to agree on a plan, a conference committee began quietly meeting. It’s been a complicated year, so everybody was surprised last week when the Columbus Dispatch‘s Anna Staver reported that Matt Huffman, a powerful legislator already elected to be senate president in the new legislative CONTINUE READING: Ohio Legislative Leader Rams Through Voucher Changes that Hurt Students in Poor, Title I Schools | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Looks to Adopt New School Finance Plan During 2020 Lame Duck Session | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Looks to Adopt New School Finance Plan During 2020 Lame Duck Session | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Looks to Adopt New School Finance Plan During 2020 Lame Duck Session

The Ohio Legislature will waste no time before trying to enact—before the end of the current legislative session at the end of December—a Fair School Funding Plan, which was proposed in the spring of 2019. The Ohio House has been holding hearings for months on what, this week, became Substitute House Bill 305. Last week Senate Education Chair, Peggy Lehner, and 14 additional co-sponsors introduced a companion bill, Senate Bill 376.

The Columbus Dispatch‘s Catherine Candisky summarizes the Ohio Legislature’s attempt to move forward immediately to pass the new school funding blueprint: “A bipartisan group of state lawmakers on Friday unveiled a complex and long-sought overhaul of Ohio’s school funding system that would provide another $1.99 billion a year—about a 24% increase—to K-12 schools when fully implemented. The proposal to change the way state aid is calculated and distributed to public schools establishes the per-pupil cost of ‘a quality education,’ and determines how much funding each local community should be able to cover itself and how much should come from the state. It aims to keep overall funding levels relatively even across the state despite widely varied tax bases across Ohio’s more than 600 school districts.”

The term-limiting of several of the plan’s co-sponsors is accelerating the timeline for seeking the bill’s passage before the end of 2020.

Here is the primary reason why a new school funding plan is needed in Ohio. Materials released when the new funding plan was introduced in the spring of 2019 showed that before the current biennium, in 503 of the state’s 610 school districts, state school funding was capped or the district had fallen onto a hold-harmless guarantee. Then the current biennial CONTINUE READING: Ohio Legislature Looks to Adopt New School Finance Plan During 2020 Lame Duck Session | janresseger