Advocates for rural school districts argue the money allocated to them in the current proposed state budget falls short of what they need — and that it will hurt small districts the most.
They gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Wednesday afternoon to take their message to lawmakers.
But Republican leaders said it's unlikely previous levels of funding will be restored because of the high price tag.
Dozens of people from small towns and rural areas said the new two-year state budget needs to include full funding of the Fair School Funding Plan, the bipartisan funding formula passed by lawmakers back in 2021. That plan takes into account programs and services needed by students.
The budget passed by the Ohio House last month doesn’t fund the last two years of phase-in of that plan. Instead, it provides line-item funding, which leaders of many school districts said is insufficient. And school districts in small towns and rural areas fear they will be hurt the most by this funding switch.
Marietta elementary physical education teacher Alex Meyers said the current version of the budget provides his district with a little more than it had last year, but not what it would have gotten under the Fair School Funding plan.
“That is going to start cutting a lot of our support staff, a lot of the people that we use to give intervention to students who are high needs,” Meyers said.
Amy Wright, a Fayette County resident, said the two local school districts — Miami Trace Local and Washington City Schools— are the heartbeat of the community. And she fears the current funding level will lead to cuts to funding for people in the schools who do important work.
“I watch them every day work really hard, from our cafeteria staff to our janitors to our teaching staff and our administration — they deserve more than what they have,” Wright said.
Dawn Zabakhsh lives in Ross County in the Adena School District. She said she also fears cuts on the local level if schools don’t get what they were expecting in the school funding formula.
“It’s just very sad. And I can’t believe that big city politicians would be having a budget that would do this kind of damage to small, rural communities,” Zabakhsh said.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said restoring funding to the fair school funding plan is “highly unlikely” in this budget.
“The bottom line was if we had done what some call the third phase (of the Fair School Funding Plan), it would have been a $1.8 billion increase in school funding,” he said.
Huffman said all schools will see an increase in funding over the amount they got last year. But funding at the level of the School Fair Funding Plan would have meant cuts to child care and other things.
But many advocates for public schools have been critical of the nearly $1 billion spent on universal school vouchers in the last budget. And vouchers have been expanded in this budget, as well as money for charter schools that haven’t received state funds before, and supplies for home schools.
They're also not happy about a provision in this budget that would only allow districts to carry over 30% of their operating budgets, and anything in excess of that, would be handed back to property taxpayers — a move public school advocates said would cause chaos and leave their schools seriously underfunded.
Myers said it’s important for lawmakers to remember one thing — small towns and rural communities have limits on what they can do funding-wise.
“In smaller and rural towns, we just can’t pass levies. We don’t have enough people. We don’t have enough support for that because they are already struggling. We are very low income, so asking them for more money is very difficult,” Myers said.
The Ohio Senate is expected to come out with amendments to the budget next week. Advocates for rural schools are hoping they will see funding for their districts restored.
