Voters in Upper Arlington and Pickerington will see school tax issues on their ballots during this election.
Pickerington Schools are back on the ballot this November after a 1.25% income tax increase failed by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in May.
After that resounding defeat, Superintendent Charles Smialek said that district officials asked the community what they could do better.
Pickerington residents wanted a smaller levy with an end date. So, this election, voters will see a 0.75% additional income tax that lasts 10 years. Social Security income is exempt.
Smialek is optimistic that voters will respond better to this new levy, which would generate $21 million dollars a year.
"I will say that this has caught fire, so to speak. I mean, there's much more positive energy for this than we saw in May, but you know, that's also quite a bit of a gap that we had to close," Smialek said. "I mean we lost pretty significantly."
In addition to asking for a smaller levy, community members wanted the district to make cuts. So, Pickerington Schools got rid of a handful of administrative positions, slashed building budgets by 25%, and began busing students only one way to games and competitions.
Those changes saved the district about $3.25 million, Smialek said.
That's not enough to shore up district finances, though. Pickerington last passed an operating issue in 2011. With growing student enrollment, the district has been spending more than it brings in since 2022. In a few years, the district is expected to run out of cash reserves.
"That falling off the cliff point comes on fiscal year 29, which is really July 1, 2028. So, we're not that far away from literally running out of money," Smialek said.
If the levy fails, Smailek said Pickerington Schools plans to end freshman and JV sports — leaving only varsity teams — and cut back on other extracurriculars. The major slimdown would impact everything from the theater program to student council, mock trial club and the school newspaper.
"At least for this half of the school year coming up, protect the classroom has really been the mantra," Smailek said. "If we still can't succeed down the road, we'd be looking at quite a bit of layoffs of teachers from especially the secondary level. There'll be some from an elementary perspective as well."
Smialek said the district is at a "critical crossroads."
But why do public schools always seem to be dangling over the edge of a financial cliff?
Upper Arlington Schools' Superintendent Robert Hunt said that in a lot of cases, it’s because of a 1970s Ohio law that prevents operating levies based on property taxes from growing with property values.
"So, because of that, school districts essentially get the same amount of money even as property values increase," Hunt said.
Voters in Upper Arlington will decide on a combined operating levy and bond issue that will appear on the ballot as 7.15 mills. The issue should cost the owner of a $500,000 home a little more than $1,250 per year, or about $105 per month.
The bond would raise more than $273 million to replace a preschool and two middle schools. That includes the historic Jones Middle School, where the district plans to renovate the oldest part of the building into offices but demolish and rebuild the rest.
Some community members like Mark Bainbridge with the group Protect Upper Arlington Schools don’t like the idea.
"I mean, tearing down historic buildings is not what we want to do in Upper Arlington," Bainbridge said.
Bainbridge said that a survey showed community members preferred repairing Jones and the preschool. Doing so, he said, would save taxpayers more than $100 million.
"In their recent literature, the UA Schools state that the district has $124 million in penned-up repairs. Why haven't the schools budgeted and planned and carried out repairs over time rather than letting them accumulate?" Bainbridge asked.
Bainbridge said the community is still paying off a 2017 bond issue that the district used to build a new Upper Arlington High School and renovate or build five elementary schools. He said incurring more debt is a concern.
"I would support the operating levy if the issues were separate, but they're not separate. You have to vote for one and the other," Bainbridge said.
Hunt said that combining the issues is intentional.
"If the bond issue were to pass, you'd be building new buildings. And if your operating failed, you would actually be cutting programming while you're building brand new buildings. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Hunt said.
If the opposite happened, the district would have to use a large amount of its budget for building repairs, which would still leave them short of what they needed to operate, Hunt said.
Hunt added that by rebuilding instead of repairing, the district has the option to spread the cost over a longer period of time, which puts a lower burden on today’s taxpayers.
"Our ability to bond this out over 38 years spreads the responsibility in terms of who's paying it for not only our community today but the community in the future," Hunt said.
Hunt knows it’s still a big ask. But he believes Ohioans actually prefer living in a state that structures its public school funding around local taxes.
"The blessing and curse of that is it's a heavy ask in your community, but it also means that locally we control the destiny of our school," Hunt said.
Early voting has begun. Election Day is Nov. 3.
