Ohio Education Association praises decision to implement Fair School Funding Plan in state budget; Concerned about future funding commitment
In addition, OEA welcomes the provision in the budget to allow districts to get out from under the failed Academic Distress Commission law, though OEA remains troubled by the massive, unprecedented boost to taxpayer funded, private school tuition vouchers and the creation of tuition tax credits to further use taxpayer money to subsidize private school tuition.
“We are extremely pleased that the Fair School Funding Plan will be our school funding system during this biennium and appreciate the House negotiators for providing a convincing argument that our kids are worth the investment,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “It will provide the framework for the state of Ohio to finally meet its constitutional mandate of providing a world-class education to every Ohio public school student, regardless of location or station. But in order to do so, the state must fulfill this plan’s great promise beyond these next two years. So the work continues. But the good news is advocacy from our members, communities, parents and students made a difference. And it will continue to do so.”
OEA is especially concerned that the committee report does not make future commitments to the Fair School Funding Plan because Ohio Director of the Office of Budget and Management Kimberly Murnieks told conference committee members Thursday that state revenue would be more than $3 billion above original projections for this fiscal year.
“The state had more than enough money to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan as originally calculated, rather than delay its full implementation,” DiMauro said. “The plan only required about half of the additional revenue to fully fund it in this budget without delay. It’s disappointing the Senate wouldn’t allow the state’s strong revenues to benefit students more quickly.”
OEA is also pleased that the Senate’s approach allowing all three school districts currently forced to operate under the failed Academic Distress Commission law to seek dismissal from the commission’s oversight.
“For too long, districts have been forced to adhere to this failed law that takes local communities out of the decision-making process for their schools,” DiMauro said. “We are glad that the budget allows districts to get out from under this unnecessarily punitive law.”
Of vouchers and tuition tax credits, DiMauro said, “We remain concerned with the legislature’s blind loyalty to a program that provides taxpayer funded private school tuition subsidies to folks who never intended to send their children to public schools in the first place and does not generally improve student outcomes. Add the new tuition tax credit to the vouchers and it appears that the priority is the 8 percent of students in private schools, not the 92 percent of students who are in Ohio’s public schools.”
OEA: ‘No excuses. Pass the Fair School Funding Plan now.’
“Every single student in Ohio deserves a world-class education, no matter where they live, what they look like, or how much money their families or their neighbors make. Ohio’s lawmakers have the once-in-a-generation chance right now to deliver on that promise, and the state has the resources to make it happen,” Ohio Education Association (OEA) President Scott DiMauro said. “The lawmakers who continue to push for a continuation of the status quo under the partisan Senate school funding plan were put on notice today: There is zero excuse not to fix our school funding system right now.”
The Fair School Funding Plan was developed over the last three and a half years through scores of public meetings and with input from school finance experts, educators, and community members. It has twice passed the Ohio House with wide bipartisan support and would provide a permanent, predictable formula to ensure all public school students in Ohio can get the resources they need to succeed while ending the state’s unconstitutional overreliance on local property taxes to fund our schools.
While critics of the Fair School Funding Plan have made misleading claims about the sustainability of the Fair School Funding Plan, confirmation from the Office of Budget and Management about the amount of funding available for the Fair School Funding Plan today makes those claims moot.
“Not only is there plenty of money in the state coffers to fully implement the Fair School Funding Plan for Ohio’s kids, there is enough to phase it in fully in this biennium, rather than over the next six years, removing just about any potential question marks about fully-phased in costs,” DiMauro said. “Even if they wait to fully fund it until next biennium, knowing what they know about the state’s flush finances, Ohio’s lawmakers should set aside the additional phase-in funding for future legislatures so there will be zero question in the next budget cycle about whether the revenue will be there to deliver for Ohio’s kids. They’ve waited too long for a school funding system that meets their needs; now, there is no reason they can’t have the fairly and fully funded schools they deserve.”
OEA Condemns Bills Seeking to Ban ‘Divisive Concepts’ in Ohio Schools
Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro released the following statement in opposition to House Bills 327 and 322, which both aim to ban Ohio’s public schools from teaching so-called “divisive concepts,” after hearings in the House State and Local Government Committee Tuesday morning:
“The Ohio Education Association (OEA) is disturbed, disappointed, and disheartened by recent efforts to white-out American history by hiding the truth from Ohio’s children – depriving them of the world-class, truth-based education they deserve. For our children to thrive and become critical thinkers, we must trust Ohio’s dedicated educators to have age-appropriate conversations about the tough subjects, as they do every day in their classrooms now. No matter where they come from or what they look like, our kids need a well-rounded, intellectually stimulating school curriculum that celebrates all of Ohio’s history, including the countless contributions made – and challenges faced – by people of color in our state. Over my 30-year career as a Social Studies teacher, I have seen for myself that when our kids learn from the past, they can help build a better future for all of us.
Instead, cynical political operatives seek to divide and distract us from their decades of failure to fix Ohio’s broken school funding system that has left so many communities behind. As Ohio’s House and Senate leaders work to finalize the next state budget, OEA continues to demand fully and fairly funded schools that have the resources to meet every child’s needs and a curriculum that nurtures every child’s curiosity and honors their integrity, whether they are Black or white, Latino or Asian, native or newcomer. Ohio’s educators know we can’t lie our way around the hard truths; our children can handle them, and they deserve nothing less.”
New data, same old story: Vouchers hurt Ohio’s kids, taxpayers
KnowYourCharter.com was recently updated to include information specifically on the EdChoice Performance Based Vouchers (the only program that tracks voucher recipient test performance). Included in the new data is how much more reliant on local property taxes districts become due to the state diverting funding from public school children to these privately run schools. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled four different times that the state had to reduce property tax reliance. These voucher and charter school programs clearly have done the opposite.
Even more troubling is the new data indicates EdChoice is fueling so-called “White Flight” from Black and brown communities. Students taking vouchers are nearly twice as likely to be White as students in the districts where 95% of the money comes from that are subsidizing those students’ private school tuitions.
“The Ohio Education Association has long fought to shine the spotlight on how these vouchers are draining resources from the approximately 90 percent of Ohio students who attend public schools. The new Know Your Charter data clearly demonstrates what we’ve known all along,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said, expressing special concern for the “White Flight” problem EdChoice is fueling: “these same communities, which have already been failed by years of inequities under the state’s unconstitutional school funding system, are forced to go to the ballot more often for larger levy increases, even though only part of that money actually goes to their kids. It smacks of state-sanctioned segregation.”
This new data allows Ohioans to find out exactly how many students are “leaving” their district with these vouchers and exactly which private schools are receiving taxpayer funded tuition subsidies at the expense of their better-performing public school counterparts. In fact, the Cincinnati Enquirer revealed last year that nearly 90% of all voucher students do worse on state tests than students who attend public schools in the same communities. Despite this, Ohio lawmakers voted late last year to expand eligibility for the EdChoice voucher program and continue its explosive, decade-long growth.
Because there is not currently any direct funding system for the EdChoice performance-based voucher program, public districts must dig into their budgets to pay for the private school tuition of students. In some districts, EdChoice deducts more money per student than is actually provided by the state, so it forces the community to use local funding to offset those losses, creating real consequences like larger class sizes and reduced opportunities for public school students. And even in communities where the deduction is less than what students in the district receive, it forces those communities to rely more on local property taxes to pay for schools.
“To add insult to injury, a large portion of the students who receive EdChoice vouchers have never set foot in the public school that’s losing money to send them to a poorly-performing private institution. In fact, that’s the case for so many recipients, the Ohio Department of Education can’t even provide an overall demographic breakdown for voucher kids, because they’ve never had them in their tracking system,” DiMauro said. “It’s frankly a disgrace and Ohio’s public school children deserve so much better than this broken scheme. OEA is grateful that the Know Your Charter site is able to demonstrate the harm so plainly now.”
The Know Your Charter website still has information about charter school performance and funding, as well as the new voucher information.
DEADLINE EXTENSION: Students, educators can now enter Ohio Education Association’s redistricting contest through June 1, 2021
“These district maps play a fundamental role in the strength of our democracy, but for too long, gerrymandered districts have allowed politicians to choose their voters, not the other way around,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “Thanks to reforms approved by voters like requirements to keep 65 of Ohio’s 88 counties whole and only let five counties be split more than twice, the redistricting commission is being held to new standards to ensure districts are politically competitive and elected leaders must represent the interests of all of their constituents, not just their favored few. Ohio’s students and educators have a chance to show them how that’s done.”
The Design Ohio’s Future contest is open to all Ohio middle and high school students as well as all OEA members. Entrants can design their maps using the free community webtool at https://districtr.org/, click the ‘share’ button, and submit their map’s URL on the OEA website at https://www.ohea.org/design-ohios-future-contest/ Full contest rules are on the submission page. All entries are due no later than June 1, 2021.
Winners will be selected for creating Ohio House, Ohio Senate, and Congressional District maps in the following categories: Most Politically Competitive, Fewest Community Splits, and Most Creative. All map entries must include districts that have roughly the same population size and are contiguous, and all entries except those in the Most Creative categories must adhere to redistricting requirements Ohioans voted for. The full requirements and a tutorial video can be found on the Design Ohio’s Future page of the OEA website.
A middle school student, high school student, and OEA member winner will be chosen in each of the nine categories. The winners will receive a special commemorative plaque and have their maps featured in the Ohio Schools magazine and on the OEA and All in for Equal Districts websites. The maps will also be shared with the state officials responsible for redrawing Ohio’s maps.
“What happens in our classrooms depends so much on what happens in our Capitol buildings,” DiMauro said. “Our current system is broken, and if we’re going to fix this mess, we need non-partisan, independent redistricting that ends map manipulation. We’re asking Ohio’s students and educators to lead the way.”
Ohio Education Association and Ohio Federation of Teachers Oppose Legislative Attack on Trans Students
“These bills — HB 61 and SB 132 — are not just a sports ban, this is part of a coordinated national attack on the safety and lives of trans students. As educators, we are speaking up because we know that our students don’t thrive when they’re not safe and healthy, and because every student deserves respect and equal opportunity.
HB 61 and SB 132 are a bad solution in desperate search of a problem. The Ohio High School Athletic Association has already implemented a detailed policy that ensures that trans students have equal opportunity while maintaining fair competition in women’s sports. Efforts to throw this policy out in favor of widespread discrimination of trans athletes are just mean-spirited attempts by some politicians to wage a culture war in our schools rather than addressing the real problems that Ohioans face. While these bills won’t address any needs in our schools or any real issues with school sports, they will send a harmful message to trans students that they are not welcome and that it is not safe for them to be themselves in our schools.
Multiple studies have shown that trans youth attempt suicide at much higher rates than their peers. The existence of these bills and the vitriol that they spark are exacerbating factors that will put our students at greater risk. Over the past year, we stood up for commonsense COVID precautions in our schools because part of our job is keeping our students safe and that’s also why we are strongly opposed to HB 61 and SB 132.”
Ohio Education Association launches redistricting contest for students, educators
“These district maps play a fundamental role in the strength of our democracy, but for too long, gerrymandered districts have allowed politicians to choose their voters, not the other way around,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “Thanks to reforms approved by voters like requirements to keep 65 of Ohio’s 88 counties whole and only let five counties be split more than twice, the redistricting commission is being held to new standards to ensure districts are politically competitive and elected leaders must represent the interests of all of their constituents, not just their favored few. Ohio’s students and educators have a chance to show them how that’s done.”
The Design Ohio’s Future contest is open to all Ohio middle and high school students as well as all OEA members. Entrants can design their maps using the free community webtool at https://districtr.org/, click the ‘share’ button, and submit their map’s URL on the OEA website at https://www.ohea.org/design-ohios-future-contest/ Full contest rules are on the submission page. All entries are due no later than May 1, 2021.
Winners will be selected for creating Ohio House, Ohio Senate, and Congressional District maps in the following categories: Most Politically Competitive, Fewest Community Splits, and Most Creative. All map entries must include districts that have roughly the same population size and are contiguous, and all entries except those in the Most Creative categories must adhere to redistricting requirements Ohioans voted for. The full requirements and a tutorial video can be found on the Design Ohio’s Future page of the OEA website.
A middle school student, high school student, and OEA member winner will be chosen in each of the nine categories. The 27 winners will receive a special commemorative plaque and have their maps featured in the Ohio Schools magazine and on the OEA and All in for Equal Districts websites. The maps will also be shared with the state officials responsible for redrawing Ohio’s maps.
“What happens in our classrooms depends so much on what happens in our Capitol buildings,” DiMauro said. “Our current system is broken, and if we’re going to fix this mess, we need non-partisan, independent redistricting that ends map manipulation. We’re asking Ohio’s students and educators to lead the way.”
OEA welcomes CDC’s school reopening guidance, calls for federal support
“The CDC guidance generally reflects what OEA has been saying since last summer about the conditions under which in-person instruction can be achieved safely. The level of community spread is the key factor in deciding the education model for students to continue receiving a high-quality education, in-person or online, and the science-based CDC guidelines recognize the absolutely necessity of mitigation measures like masks, social distancing, and sanitization procedures. Emphasizing the importance of COVID testing further strengthens these safety norms,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said.
The CDC’s guidance also calls for prioritizing school instruction over extracurricular activities and sports, echoing OEA’s Putting Education First policy which asked Ohioans to avoid non-essential activities to limit community spread of the virus to enable school buildings to remain open for in-person instruction. The full Putting Education First policy can be downloaded here.
“OEA is pleased to see leadership from the CDC on this issue and to see the importance of equity in the federal policies to direct resources to communities that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, including many communities of color or those with high-poverty, where actions like updating ancient ventilation systems in schools or addressing the digital divide have thus far felt out of reach,” DiMauro said. “It is now up to U.S. lawmakers to follow through on these promises and pass President Biden’s COVID relief package, which will include over $130 billion in targeted support for PreK-12 schools, about $4 billion of which would go to Ohio.”
“It is simply not possible to follow the CDC’s rules without the resources to do so,” DiMauro explained. “More than 60 percent of Ohio’s teachers are already teaching in person – some are doing so at risk to themselves. But they shouldn’t have to. Our members want more than anything to be in their classrooms with their students when it is safe, and we are all counting on Congress to deliver what we know is needed to make schools safe now.”
OEA applauds resolution on use of state testing data, but urges further action
“Teaching never stops; learning never stops. However, we must be mindful of the fact that the pandemic has, as Dr. Collins put it, ‘affected every student in Ohio, disrupting the structure of teaching and learning’ this year,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “Dr. Collins’ calls to lower the stakes for state testing and ensure the results are appropriately labeled to reflect the circumstances under which testing is occurring this year are an important step in safeguarding our students, educators, and communities from unfair punishments as a result of this spring’s tests.”
Even so, OEA maintains a much more important measure would be to suspend standardized testing altogether, especially since they must be administered in person, even to students who have been learning remotely all year. Therefore, OEA urges lawmakers to quickly approve House Bill 67, bi-partisan legislation that would waive state testing requirements for the 2020-2021 school year and require the Department of Education to seek a waiver from federal testing requirements.
“While we certainly would prefer that tests not be given this year, given the yawning disparities in educational delivery the pandemic has created between districts, we deeply appreciate Dr. Collins’ efforts to minimize the harm these tests will thrust upon our students and fully support her resolution,” DiMauro said.
OEA urges passage of Fair School Funding Plan in light of new revenue estimates
“Our students can’t afford to wait any longer for Ohio’s leaders to do the right thing,” said OEA President Scott DiMauro. “The state can no longer justify its failure to act. The money is there to finally deliver on the promise of world-class education for all Ohio students once and for all.”
The Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), which was passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support in the Ohio House during the last legislative session, would enact a student-centered school funding formula that is equitable, adequate, predictable, and that ensures that all students have the resources to succeed regardless of where they live or their family’s income. The FSFP would provide an additional $1.99 billion in state aid when fully phased in and provides about 70% of the increased funds to the poorest urban, small town, and rural districts in the state. Importantly, it would finally fix the state’s broken funding system, which was ruled unconstitutional decades ago by the Ohio Supreme Court in 1997’s landmark DeRolph v. State of Ohio ruling.
The Ohio Senate refused to consider the FSFP legislation in the last legislative session, and Gov. DeWine refused to include it in the executive budget ‘blue book’ released earlier this week. Instead, he punted the issue back to the legislature.
“We’ve had three generations of Ohio students go through an unconstitutionally funded school system, leaving them victims to a scheme that has never accurately reflected the true cost of educating kids in this state. Legislators can easily end that seemingly ceaseless cycle by passing Speaker Cupp’s school funding plan,” DiMauro said. “The time for excuses is over. The time for action is now.”