Just what sort of education costs are :unsustainable”? Jan Resseger takes a look. Reposted with permission.
I am relieved and grateful that Governor Mike DeWine’s recently released proposal for Ohio’s biennial FY 2026-2027 state budget includes the third and final step in the phase-in of the Fair School Funding Plan, the new school funding formula designed to meet the requirements of the Ohio Constitution.
You will remember that in mid-January, Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman declared the Fair School Funding “unsustainable” and predicted that the state lacks the revenue to finish the necessary third step in the three part phase-in of what experts designed as the required state investment to achieve adequate and fairly distributed public school funding across Ohio’s 610 school districts. There will be some debate about the details, but at least DeWine, whose budget proposal sets up the this spring’s budget debate, demonstrates support for adequate and equitable school funding.
Ohio State Representative Bride Rose Sweeney, a fourth term Democrat, has been a strong supporter of the Fair School Funding Plan. In a recent column for Crain’s Cleveland Business, Rep. Sweeney summarizes some important history about Ohio public school finance: “In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court found that the system was arbitrary and grossly unfair and ordered a ‘complete, systematic overhaul’ of the way the state funds our schools. The court emphasized that the overreliance on (local) property taxes to fund public schools violated the only legislative duty explicitly assigned to the General Assembly in Ohio’s state constitution… Ohio lawmakers allowed the system to limp along this way for decades, such that by 2020 not a single public school district in the state received the funding that it was supposed to (get) under the state’s own calculations, all while forcing property owners to pick up the rest of the tab. It wasn’t until 2021 that we finally took the first step toward adopting a predictable, fair and rational formula: the Fair School Funding Plan.”
Sweeney explains what experts aimed to accomplish as they designed the new formula: “The plan is built on the foundation of answering one essential question…. How much does it cost to educate a child in Ohio?… A diverse group of educators and school finance experts from school districts large and small, rural and urban, rich and poor formed what would become known as the Fair School Funding Workgroup. They started by creating a formula that calculates the base cost, which is the cost of educating a typical student with no additional needs with the goal of eventually including the other costs associated with educating students who are economically disadvantaged, gifted, English language learners, or who have special needs… We need to follow through on our commitment by completing the last two years of the phase-in in this budget cycle. We must also ensure that the formula keeps up with rising costs to local communities by updating the cost inputs… Because local contributions are updated regularly through property tax assessments, if the state’s share continues to lag behind, then more and more of the tax burden will be shifted onto local property taxpayers….”
Clearly one of the reasons Ohio House Speaker Huffman claims that the Fair School Funding Plan is unsustainable is the Speaker’s own priority: an enormous, uncapped diversion of state revenue to school privatization through the universal EdChoice Expansion private school voucher program that was folded into the last budget without sufficient public hearings. This year Ohio spent nearly a billion dollars on EdChoice Expansion vouchers.
A wave of new universal private school tuition voucher programs has washed across a number of states in the past couple of years. The director of education policy at the national child advocacy organization, First Focus on Children, Lily Klam just released an excellent report exploring how, in many states like Ohio, growing school privatization threatens public school funding:
“The… fundamental problem with voucher programs is that they undermine the real pathway to educational equity: a properly funded, robust, and accessible universal public school system. Where public schools do struggle, research shows that it is not because the public school model is irredeemable; it is because public schools have been starved of resources. For example, economist Kirabo Jackson estimates that ‘a permanent 10 percent spending increase—or an increase of $1,260 per student—would lead to 7 percent higher wages at age 40 and a three percent point lower likelihood of adult poverty among those exposed to the spending increases across all 12 years of their public school education. This chronic underfunding is especially acute in school districts that need funding the most. Public school districts in high-poverty areas spend significantly less per student and are hit the hardest by economic downturns.”
The executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, Hanna Halbert flatly rejects Speaker Huffman’s allegation that the Fair School Funding Plan is fiscally unsustainable. Instead Halbert believes: “Voucher spending is unsustainable… In the year since Ohio expanded vouchers and began providing tuition vouchers regardless of need, the number of vouchers has exploded, while private school enrollment has remained largely flat, confirming that the program primarily benefits households already sending students to private school.” On the other hand: “Disparities in (public) school funding have long created inequities in educational quality and outcomes. Historically marginalized communities, including racial minorities and low-income families, bear the brunt of this inequity. These disparities are not just unfair, they perpetuate cycles of poverty, limiting upward mobility and denying countless children the chance to reach their potential.”
Halbert believes the Legislature must not only complete the phase-in of the Fair School Funding Plan, but she also reiterates Rep. Sweeney’s demand that legislators update the cost data on which the formula operates to reflect not what it cost two years ago to educate a student but instead what it costs today in 2025: “Ohio’s funding formula reflects regular changes in the local property-tax base; it must also factor in up-to-date, realistic cost estimates. Analysis by the Ohio Education Policy Institute shows how including increased property valuation and income data without also updating the costs of educating a child masks the gap between what can be generated locally and what schools really need. This creates the illusion that the state’s obligation is much smaller than it really is, allowing legislators to rationalize funding cuts. Lawmakers must correct this in the… budget.”
The Ohio Legislature must include the phase-in of the third and final step of the Fair School Funding Plan in the new biennial budget to be passed by June 30, 2025.