Ohio’s state legislature is hurting public school kids — again
Letter to the Editor,
If you’ve lived in Ohio during election season, you’ve seen signs for or against levies or levy renewals for local schools. School levies have long been a fact of life here, but they are far less common in other states. This is because the way Ohio funds its schools was declared unconstitutional by its Supreme Court in 1997, when I was in high school at Tusky Valley.
Our legislature waited over 20 years to fix it. When the bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan finally passed in 2021, things finally started getting better for my own kids attending Ohio public schools. The plan takes six years to fully enact.
Now, however, our state government has pulled back on fully funding it. Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposed budget bases the state’s funding for schools on 2022 costs, but the cost of basically everything has gone up since then.
Some state legislators, like House Speaker Matt Huffman, have claimed the state simply doesn’t have the money to fully fund the plan. However, last year the state legislature sent almost $1 billion to private schools in the form of vouchers, and 95% of new vouchers in 2024 were used by families whose children already attended private schools. These families were already paying for private school out of pocket, and now taxpayers are paying for it.
If the proposed budget passes as is, Claymont, Garaway, Indian Valley, Strasburg and Tusky Valley stand to be a collective $4 million in the red just by the end of fiscal year 2027. At the same time, the proposed state budget increases spending on vouchers to over $1 billion. Tell our state representatives the money to fully fund public schools is there if we tighten the purse strings on vouchers for families who can already afford them.
Kari Sommers Dover