At first glance, the governor’s education plan might seem to some like high school math – you know, the complicated high school math you might have never really understood well or, if you did, you simply forgot over the years.
Instead of (3x + y) = (2x – 2y) or some such thing you get the following from the Executive Budget for FYs 2010-2011: More on education budget.
So, the district in the example above with growth in value of existing property from $100 million to $120 million would see its chargeoff rise from $2.3 million to $2.76 million (an increase of $460,000), while its Class I property tax would increase from $2.0 million to $2.4 million (an increase of $400,000). So, the increase in local revenue does not quite match the increase in the charge-off (it falls short by $60,000), and reappraisal phantom revenue is ameliorated but not eliminated.
That’s clear, right?
But, interestingly enough, any of the complexities in the education plan really speak more to the necessary transition: Taking us from an extremely complex and unworkable tax and school funding system to something that is relatively simple and called for in these tough economic times.
The unpleasant truth about the old school funding system is that it just doesn’t work well. And everyone knows it.
Governor Strickland and his staff released the details of his education and school funding plan yesterday, which calls for an evidence-based approach to funding public schools and making provisions so local school districts can keep more of their local tax revenue to help pay for growing expenses.
The simplicity of the evidence-based approach and the rest of the governor’s education plan should not be confused with the difficult transition everyone must make from the current system, which uses a foundation formula to represent an adequate education, to a new system of funding that is based on other approaches. There is no doubt that the transition will be a bear.
To try to help reporters and others in Columbus at a briefing understand the new system, the Office of Budget and Management included the following PowerPoint slide in the Budget in Brief document: “Forget everything you know about the Foundation Formula!”
But the new system can be thought of in three simple ways:
1. The evidence-based plan uses research and best practices to determine the amount of resources that should be available to every student based on that student’s need. Thus, if the governor’s plan is adopted, you can be reasonably assured that your local school district has enough resources to reach the academic standards set out for them. More on evidence-based plan.
And
2. Local school districts will be asked to pay 20 mills of local residential property tax toward that system (2% of valuation), and the state will pay for the rest. Thus, this plan does not push off funding for fundamental needs to local districts outside of the initial contribution of local property taxes. More on tax changes.
And
3. Through changes in state law, local school districts will have more of their local property tax growth available to them to help keep up with inflation and avoid going to the ballot so often for more money. Thus, school districts have some limited relief from levy fatigue. More on tax levies.
If you get all that, then you generally understand what is being proposed for the next two years in Ohio education
We previously called for the evidence-based approach for several reasons, not the least of which is that it transparently links resources to those outcomes we all want for children. But it became clear yesterday that another benefit of this approach right now, with an economic crisis pushing down state tax revenues 11% over two years (FY2009 and 2010), is that taxpayers can be assured that scarce tax dollars are less likely to be wasted if they are tightly targeted to spending areas linked to research and best practices on how children learn and succeed.