Stephen Dyer · May 31, 2013

Ohio Senate Education Plan Falls Short

Yesterday, Ohio Senate leaders unveiled the chamber’s education funding plan. Touted as containing a large funding increase, the Senate budget does indeed increase funding slightly when compared to the House plan, but still falls far short of replacing the $1.8 billion in cuts contained in the last two-year budget. As a result, schools will once again be forced to operate on less state funding than they had in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. The fate of individual districts continues to demonstrate priorities in Columbus that favor the rich over everyone else. Nearly 40% of the state’s poorest rural districts will see no increase compared to the last budget, when districts received steep cuts. Meanwhile, about 85% of the state’s wealthiest districts see funding go up. It is tough to see how giving more money to the state’s wealthiest districts and leaving the state’s poorest districts to deal with their massive cuts from last budget is fair, equitable or constitutional. I will be further analyzing this proposal in the coming days, but wanted to let you know initially what it looks like. Here’s a chart showing the breakdown of what kinds of districts will receive increases vs. no increases.