CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER OPINION—WILL THE OHIO SENATE INVEST IN PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS? SUSIE KAESER
The opinion highlights the efficacy of Cupp/Patterson and reveals the inadequacies of the Senate school funding plan.
Will the Ohio Senate invest in public school students? Susie Kaeser
Posted Jun 06, 5:15 AM
By Guest Columnist, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- On June 1, state Sen. Matt Dolan and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman unveiled their education funding proposal, giving the Ohio Senate just nine days to vet the plan before voting on its version of the state budget. It is a stark contrast to the Fair School Funding Plan that underwent three years of review and revision before winning overwhelming bipartisan support as part of the House budget bill.
If allowed to become law, the Senate education budget will weaken our system of public education. It will underfund the public system and make equal access to high-quality education impossible, while simultaneously increasing state spending on private, unaccountable, and unregulated education opportunities.
Lawmakers have a clear choice. The Senate proposal advances limited government and individual choice. The Fair School Funding Plan is committed to equal opportunity, the value of every individual, education as a civic purpose, and the importance of an educated citizenry to a democracy.
The Senate’s counteroffer to the Fair School Funding Plan offers bare-bones funding of the public system that serves 90% of Ohio’s students. It sets the basic investment guaranteed to public school students at $6,110, an increase of just $90, while the House version increases funding to a minimum of $7,000, based on a careful analysis of the actual cost of education.
While limiting the investment in the public system, the Senate goes all-out to expand and fund education opportunities outside of the traditional system. It increases the value of an EdChoice voucher by $1,500 and Special Education vouchers by $4,500. The plan creates tuition tax credits for private schools and for educational materials for home schoolers, expands where charter schools may be established, and increases the state’s investment in charter school facilities and programs.
The Fair School Funding Plan seeks to achieve what the Ohio Constitution wants for all of the people of the state: a high-quality public education. The state’s responsibility is to make sure that it is equally available to all students and that taxpayers in each community are treated fairly. This requires the state budget to allocate sufficient funds to public education and distribute them to school districts in a way that provides a proper balance of state and local investments.
The House-passed plan achieves fairness by linking state spending to the actual cost of education, rather than to what the legislature might want to spend, and by a careful assessment of what each community can afford to contribute to that cost. These features are absent from the Senate version.
The champions of the Senate plan try to justify their plan as being predictable and sustainable, something school districts desperately need from state funding.
Two things about the Senate option are predictable: Local districts will lack adequate state funds to meet the needs of all of their students, and local property taxes will grow. It may be sustainable for the legislature, but it isn’t for local communities that have to fill the funding void.
During Ohio Senate hearings, citizens and educators from across the state expressed their confidence in their public schools and the desperate need for an infusion of state resources. School district budgets as well as local taxpayers are stretched to the limit. A 21st-century education may be required for a thriving economy, but it is out of reach in too many places.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall put it in the 1974 “San Antonio v. Rodrieguez” case, “I believe the question of discrimination in educational quality must be deemed to be an objective one that looks to what the state provides its children, not to what the children are able to do with what they receive.”
What will the state of Ohio provide its children? The Fair School Funding Plan offers lawmakers a solid solution to the funding failures of the past. What they choose to do with this plan will reveal their commitment to Ohio’s success, to the value of every child, and to the Ohio Constitution.
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