School Levies | Rowsey Blog

School Levies

February 29, 2008

Although it is often heard being said that voters are tired of giving more money to our schools, the state of Ohio has yet to develop a system of school funding that is both equitable and constitutional. School districts across Central Ohio will be asking for precious operating dollars to continue to provide the educational opportunities that their clients have come to expect.

In Franklin County alone, districts including Canal Winchester, Hillard, Reynoldsburg, Olentangy, and Pickerington school systems will be coming to their voters asking for the necessary money needed to continue the programming that they currently offer. In most cases, this is money that is needed to continue the programming and academic programs that are currently being offered, not money to offer obscure classes or build new school buildings with plasma TVs.

It is our responsibility as members of these communities to support our schools in all ways, including financially. We must remember that the quality of our schools not only directly affect our children, but also the quality of our neighborhoods and property values. Until Governor Strickland and the legislature develop a plan to fund our public schools in ways other than property taxes, it is our moral obligation to provide today’s youth with at least the same opportunities that we had ourselves as children. Although we are in the midst of economic uncertainty, our children must be prepared to become the leaders of the 21st century.

Posted by Jason Rowsey | Filed Under Politics 

Comments

2 Responses to “School Levies”

  1. Why So Secretive? | Rowsey Blog on March 15th, 2008 8:51 pm

    [...] Could this be a contributing factor as to why Ohio has such a hard time passing school levies?  I’ve actually written about the passage of school levies in this post. [...]

  2. Paul Lambert on March 17th, 2008 5:56 am

    Jason:

    I saw your link to my blog, and want to say thanks for stopping by.

    I suspect you and I have different opinions on many things, but that’s the strength of our country, not a problem. I could do without our system of political parties however - neither the Democrats nor Republicans do a very good job of representing my views, nor anyone else’s for that matter, but that’s another story.

    One difference might be in the degree of ‘home rule’ a school district should have, and therefore the degree of funding responsibility. In my opinion, suburban school districts are screwed up because of development choices they made, not because the funding system is flawed. I’m not sure anyone owes them a bailout - or where the money would come from anyway.

    Our situation here in Central Ohio, or in any of the urban centers of the state, is different than that of Perry County, where the DeRolph lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of our current funding system was raised.

    The rural areas of the state (not the exurbs of the big cities) truly have a funding problem. The low levels of commercial activity and the artifically low valuations of farmland (in essence a farm subsidy) in those areas make it difficult to fund schools from local tax sources, whether income or property based. It is appropriate for the wealthier areas of the state to pay taxes to subsidize the schools in these areas. But there are distinctions here as well.

    We want farmland to stay farmland and farmers to continue to operate their farms. As long as that is public policy, we should be willing to pay the taxes that support it.

    But in the post-industrial rural areas, such as southeastern Ohio where my family has lived for over 200 years, the industries that provided well-paying jobs are largely gone, never to return. Our decision to subsidize the schools and other social programs for those areas removes the incentive for the individuals to enact the permanent solution - move somewhere where there is a better job market. My family moved to Ohio in 1790 for one reason only - economic survival. They endured all kinds of hardships to do so. Unfortunately, the post WWII generation down there thinks it’s the government’s duty to subsidize their choice to stay. I don’t, and I didn’t.

    The urban areas are something different. Ohio’s system of municipal schools allows an urban area to develop into a patchwork made up of the large but poor central city district surrounded by more affluent suburban districts.

    Central Ohio takes it one step further - the Penick v. Columbus Bd of Ed decision ordered busing to fix racial segregation in Columbus Public Schools, but the community responded by fleeing to the suburban schools in the great White Flight of the 1980s. It was a massive windfall for the developers and homebuilders. The Win-Win Agreement secured the future for the homebuilders by decoupling the boundaries of Columbus Public Schools from the city limits of Columbus.

    And so we now have suburbs with big expensive school systems, and no commercial help in the funding burden, just like the farmland regions of the state. Meanwhile the Columbus school district has become Blacker and poorer than it was prior to desegregation, and more needy of subsidization.

    And the homebuilders kept throwing up new houses by the thousand every year, with the support of the suburban governments - even though each incremental house generates far less tax revenue than is required to provide the city services demanded or the school funding necessary to educate the kids that came with those houses. Most school boards were like the proverbial deer in the headlights. The only thing they can do now is throw more and more levies on the local homeowners, who by and large are as ignorant as the school board members as to the cause of this situation.

    That’s the reason most wealthy districts in the state joined in with the DeRolph lawsuit - they let things get out of control and are looking for a bailout. The problem is that the wealthy suburbs have to be the source of the money to subsidize the rural districts in places like Perry and Lawrence County.

    The Getting Right for Ohio’s Future Amendment has a solution - tax everyone more. Maybe another solution is to consolidate all the schools in the urban areas and pool resources. Can you imagine the uproar!

    The other factor which is core in this issue is school employee compensation. While there was unquestionably a time when teachers were underpaid, years of aggressive bargaining by the unions have brought us to a place where a career in teaching can be quite lucrative compared to private industry. I’m not saying that teachers are overpaid, only that school employee compensation is what consumes nearly 90% of the operating funds, and causes more than 95% of the budget growth from year to year.

    From a macro standpoint, the phenomenon we now see is a transfer of wealth from private sector workers to government workers. While private sector workers are getting low raises, if any, paying a substantial portion of their health insurance costs, and funding their own retirement - the public sector workers are doing much better.

    The current contract for the Hilliard teachers - now being renegoted - has a 3.65% base pay increase for all teachers, plus a 4.15% step increase for teachers with 0-15 years of service, and they contribute nothing to their health insurance premiums. After 30 years of service, the teacher can retire at 66% of the final pay, which will typically be around $85,000 - making their pension about $56,000/yr - forever. My pension will be based on whatever I’ve built up in my 401(k), and I’ll have to underwrite my own health care costs in excess of Medicare/Medicaid.

    The solution to all of this isn’t more taxes - it’s finding a better way to run schools. I’m an advocate of a 100% voucher system, which is not the same thing as the abomination we now have in Ohio. I thinking of the approach advocated by Milton Friedman, in which each and every kid gets a voucher and can use it in any accredited school as 100% of the tuition.

    My blog is dedicated to this stuff. If school funding and school politics are interesting to you, please stop by.

    Con mucho gusto.

    Paul

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