CINCINNATI — Gov. Mike DeWine said education is one of lawmakers' top three priorities this legislative session. His push comes as Ohio is phasing in the "Fair School Funding Formula," which is expected to bring more than $3 billion to public schools over the next two years. However, some superintendents feel lawmakers still need to do more to make funding equitable.
House Bill 305, also known as Cupp-Patterson, is designed to fund public schools based on the actual cost of educating a child and their individual needs. It's also intended to cut down on a school district's reliance on local property taxes — something Ohio superintendents have said causes an uneven playing field.
Even with some reforms in place, districts have had to go back to the voters to ask for more money for basic funding. Last year, voters in the Forest Hills School District passed a tax levy with 53% support. That increase was just to keep things operational.
"The discrepancies between school districts are based on property wealth," said Forest Hills Superintendent Larry Hook. "Where you're talking about districts that are poorer in property wealth, they have a much higher amount of state dollars coming to them ... when you have typically suburban schools that have higher property values, it flips ... the interplay between state dollars and local dollars gets reversed. So the majority of your funding is going to come from your own local taxpayers."
In general, the combination of state and local tax dollars funds the majority of money a school district gets when it comes to educating a child. Forest Hills was capped at what it was bringing in from the state, so it needed a tax levy to respond to rising costs.
While House Bill 305 will help with public school funding, Hook noted House Bill 920 — which was enacted in 1976 — keeps inflation from increasing voted taxes.
"So when we pass a levy, in my case, Forest Hills passes a levy ... and that produces X number of dollars based on property values within our local district, we can never collect more than what that dollar amount is, so that flat lines," Hook said. "Until that's dealt with, you're still going to have some fundamental issues of why these levies continue to cycle back."
Ohio School Report Cards says 49% of the district's funding is paid by local property taxes. That number is higher than the state average of 41.5%.
When it comes to state dollars, Forest Hills receives $23 million — or 23.3% of its budget — from state money. That number is lower than the state average of 36.8%.
The local dollars are also more apparent for Forest Hills, as WCPO found 21.6% of its funding is paid by "other," which is made up of tax increment financing, or local TIF dollars.
WCPO took some of these concerns to DeWine, asking whether or not lawmakers have the appetite to change the school funding formula even more. He mentioned Cupp-Patterson as an example of the reform.
"The whole idea was to look more closely at what it actually costs to educate a child, so we have funded that, and we will continue, as long as I'm governor, we'll continue to fund that," DeWine said. 'It goes up each year, and we're going to do everything we can to match those dollars as it was outlined in this plan."
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