| The Columbus Dispatch
After nearly two years of meeting, debating and refining a proposed new funding formula for Ohio’s K-12 education, state lawmakers finally appear ready to vote.
House Bill 305, known around the Statehouse as Cupp-Patterson after its original sponsors, is scheduled for a committee vote Wednesday morning — setting up probable vote by the full Ohio House as early as Wednesday afternoon.
Here’s what would change if this formula became law:
How Ohio calculates a district’s wealth
The current funding formula gives out state money by totaling the costs for educating an average student minus each district’s ability to pay. Basically, poorer districts get more state dollars while wealthier districts get less. It’s called the State Share Index, but school funding experts on all sides call it confusing at best.
Why? It’s a ranking system that ties one district’s funding to the success or failure of property taxes in every other school district.
“You could suddenly have less state money coming in because it looked like, relative to other districts, you looked wealthier even if nothing had changed at all,” Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro said during a committee hearing Tuesday morning.
HB 305 would calculate a district’s local share individually, using a mixture of property values (60%) and family income (40%).
“It’s more fair to the local taxpayers,” co-sponsor Rep. John Patterson, D-Jefferson, said.
Caps and guarantees
One of the biggest complaints to the current way Ohio funds its K-12 schools is that too many districts aren’t using the current formula. They are either capped (getting less than the formula dictates) or on the guarantee (getting more).
Cupp-Patterson would eliminate this and put everyone on a single formula.
“I think it stops pitting one school district against another,” said Stan Bahorek, the treasurer for Columbus City Schools. “What I might argue as a cap school might not benefit a formula or a guarantee district. This funding mechanism creates that division and tension. In this bill, we are all together. We stand as equals in the formula.”
Money for charter schools
Ohio doesn’t pay charter schools directly. It pays the student’s local school district and asks it to cut the check. It’s called the “pass-through” method, and seemingly everyone dislikes it.
Chad Aldis, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told the House Finance Committee on Tuesday that moving to direct payments is great, but he still has issues with how the new formula would fund charters.
“Unfortunately, the plan does not narrow funding gaps between Ohio’s urban charters and urban districts,” he said.
Charter schools would use the same base-cost model as local districts, but the formula doesn’t provide full base amounts for three components.
“If the plan has indeed captured the costs of educating a student for all districts,” Aldis said, “it should apply just the same for charters.”
Paying for it all
Speaking of money, the big question on the minds of lawmakers as they prepare to vote on a new school funding formula is where to find nearly $2 billion extra dollars. That’s how much more money the formula would pump into Ohio’s public schools each year, once it was phased in after a six-year period.
Some Republicans, like Sen. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, say the price tag could be even higher. It’s led to conversations about scaling back the funding in the early years or delaying the bill’s implementation.
“A formula without funding doesn’t do us any good,” DiMauro said.
Still, he and other educators advocated passage of HB 305 — even without a promise of funding — because that seems simpler than starting all over again with a new bill when the next General Assembly takes office in January.
“This is a critical first step,” DiMauro said. “This provides a framework to address the needs of students.”
Huffman is more inclined to wait though. The incoming Senate President created his own workgroup with the goal of weaving any new school funding formula into next year’s budget bill.
Doing the homework
Lawmakers packed HB 305 full of studies on everything from the cost of special education to incentive programs for rural districts serving gifted children. And it comes with a $5 million appropriation for these studies.
One that attracted attention during Tuesday’s committee was the true cost of educating economically disadvantaged students.
“Fifty-one percent (of students) are economically disadvantaged,” Rep. Erica Crawley, D-Columbus, said. “Does this bill get us where we need to be?”
The short answer, DiMauro said, was no. The proposal would raise the base amount districts get for these students from $272 to $422 per pupil.
“However, national research finds that the cost of educating an economically disadvantaged student can be more than twice as high,” DiMauro said. “An Ohio-centered study is critical towards closing the education opportunity gap here in Ohio.”
The big bus fight
“In some communities, districts bus as many or more kids to charter and voucher schools than their own,” DiMauro said.
Public school advocates have called it an unfunded mandate for years, so HB 305 would increase the amount of money districts get for busing and direct future General Assemblies to set aside $45 million in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 to replace aging buses.
