“In addition, we intend to pick up on a concept both the governor and the house were responsible for putting forward,” Widener said. “How can we continue to drive more dollars to low-wealth, low-density and low-capacity districts around the state of Ohio?”
Under the Senate plan, Butler County school districts Edgewood, Lakota, Ross and Talawanda would see essentially no change in state funding for two years.
On the other side, New Miami would receive the largest increase if the senate budget proposal is approved: 21.6 percent in 2015-2016 and 2.5 percent in 2016-2017.
Madison schools would be close behind, with a 12.2 percent increase in the first year and a 7.3 percent increase in 2016-2017.
Monroe, Middletown, Hamilton, Fairfield would also receive state funding increases, 16.4, 16.3 and 11.2 percent, respectively, for the biennium
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Warren County’s greatest state funding gain would go to Springboro schools with a 9.4 percent increase in 2015-2016 and a 7.4 percent increase the year after. Little Miami schools would see an increase of 2.7 percent in the first year and 4.7 percent in the second, and Franklin would gain 3.4 percent in 2015-2016 and 2.9 percent in 2016-2017.
Other districts would see more modest gains, or none.
There are now three weeks left for the Senate to approve its two-year budget and school funding plan, for a House-Senate conference committee to reach a compromise, and for Kasich to sign it.
The challenge is that the three school funding plans — Kasich’s February proposal, the version the House passed in April and the Senate’s plan announced Monday — calculate school district wealth and capacity differently and project different funding amounts for individual school districts.
Randy Bertram, treasurer of Middletown City Schools, said the district prefers Kasich’s proposal, which sees funding increase 31 percent in a two-year period, over both the Senate and the House’s proposals, which would have it increase 24.64 percent and 23.06 percent, respectively.
“We are receiving much more aid with the governor’s plan than the other two however, we are still underfunded by $16,614,649 to $18,369,816 in all three plans in fiscal year ‘17,” Bertram said.
Hamilton school Treasurer Robert Hancock said his district prefers the “immediate financial results” of Kasich’s version as compared to the House and Senate versions.
Kasich’s original proposal saw Lakota Local School District set to weather $9.7 million worth of reductions over a two-year period, including a proposed phase-out of tangible personal property tax reimbursements over the biennium.
The Senate version mirrors the House version for Lakota, with both versions holding the district harmless from reductions in funding over those two years, according to Jenni Logan, the district’s treasurer.
“If this holds it would be a tremendous improvement over the original proposal,” Logan said. “No cut in funding is a win for Lakota schools and its community.”
Both the House and Senate versions include a return to the phasing out of these dollars in 2018.
“While neither version is an answer for the long-term, it does give us additional time to problem solve on this issue,” Logan said.
Widener and Senate President Keith Faber said the Senate proposal would increase total state funding for K-12 schools by $351 million in 2015-16, and then by another $233 million on top of that in 2016-17.
Faber said the Senate wants to get Ohio closer to pure implementation of the existing school funding formula, arguing that guarantees and caps for districts at the ends of the spectrum get in the way.
“A formula that only has 20 percent of the districts on it really isn’t much of a formula,” Faber said. “We’re trying to make sure we’re doing a formula that is long term, predictable, stable and does what we need to do to fund kids. I think we’re headed in that direction, and if you look at the numbers, I think most of our districts are going to be satisfied.”
Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association, said his group is in the process of evaluating the Senate proposal. He lauded small provisions that would help rural districts with transportation funding and needy districts with technology funding. But the big question is the “capacity” decision.
“Capacity is about the ability of the school district to raise funds locally,” Asbury said. “The higher your total property valuation and the higher you median income, in theory the less money you should get (from the state). And low-capacity districts should get more. … But it depends what method they use to calculate that capacity.”
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