There was a lot of federal stimulus funds poured into K-12 education in the last budget. Knowing that money would likely not be replaced, Ohio’s more than 600 public school districts have been preparing for cuts for two years, says Damon Asbury, the director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association.
“Schools have already made a lot of cuts. And a lot of those cuts only are felt by the students and by the teachers and by the folks in the school. The general community doesn’t necessarily see those. And it’s a long-term process before the effects of poor education are spelled out in the general commuity.”
And the state’s 162 public charter schools, which operate in Ohio’s major cities, say they can’t take any more cutting at the state level – because they can’t ask the local community for help. Bill Sims is the president and CEO of the Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
“Charter schools don’t have that recourse, to go to local…(You don’t have levies on the ballot.) So it comes right out of our muscle. There’s no fat.”
And Sims says the cuts that have happened over the last few years have cost Ohio’s charter schools dearly.
“An interesting statistic is that, in spite of the closure laws for underperforming laws in the state, of the charter schools that closed this past year, more than half of them were because of financial reasons. Not because they weren’t making their state audits, but because they couldn’t make it work financially.”
And Asbury says it takes years for the scars from budget cuts to show.
“What worries me the most about short-term cuts is, these students are only going to school one time. They’re only going to be in first grade one time, or a senior one time. And when we make these cuts now – draconian cuts – then that student’s career is affected for the rest of their lives.”
Predictions of dire cuts in state funding to primary education are not new. But a consultant with the state’s largest teachers union depending on how those cuts come about, they might be enough to drive the state back in a system that is unfair was ruled illegal by the Ohio Supreme Court in the DeRolph case in 1997. Russ Harris with the Ohio Education Association says a tiered cut that forces districts to rely more on local financing is unequal.
“And it’s unequal in a way that’s so inherently unfair that it brought about the DeRolph litigation in the first place. (Could we see another DeRolph case?) People have asked me about that. I went through that for 15 years. (You’re not looking forward to doing that again?) And I can tell you one thing, I’m not going to do another DeRolph case, but there may be younger and more ambitious and energetic people and advocates for children that would bring such a case.”
But there is good news coming for districts who signed on to the federal Race To The Top program. They’ll get $400 million from that, and while Asbury says it will be tough for districts to meet that program’s objectives with state and local funding cutbacks, Harris says districts that do will be ahead of others nationally. But Sims says some of his charter schools have dropped out after deciding the money isn’t worth all the paperwork required to get it.