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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
When more might actually be cheaper
The math seems real simple.
Ohio has 88 counties and 613 school districts. That’s an average of seven districts per county even though most of those counties are small and many are sparsely populated.
It would HAVE to be a money saver to consolidate most of those districts. Even if Ohio couldn’t get down one school district per county, suppose it could reduce to, say, 200 school districts. Eliminating the duplication of services of having 400 extra school districts would HAVE to save the state money.
Maybe the savings could even be great enough to solve Ohio’s school funding problems? I’m not the only one who thought that way.
But when we got into the numbers, it was remarkable how flimsy the case for consolidation became.
When we were planning Sunday’s package on school funding my colleague William Hershey and I started with a simple approach. We wanted to look back at the 10 years since the first court ruling, explain the proposed constitutional amendment and the legislature’s response.
That’s when editor John Erickson challenged us. What other ideas were out there, he asked. Were there other solutions to school funding? Perhaps something that’s been tried in another state?
Hershey and I agreed that there is frequent talk among legislators about the idea of consolidating school districts, something that’s been increasingly tried in other states. Erickson was sold and off we went to explore if this could work in Ohio.
What we found, frankly, suprised me. I expected that consolidation almost certainly would save significant money. The question would be whether that move would be a smart idea educationally. Or so I thought.
As you can see in the story, the numbers just didn’t add up. When we combined the spending of very small school districts, there was a modest savings when compared to a school district of roughly the same enrollment. But not a huge savings.
And as we looked at small counties that were just slightly larger, the better those counties looked when their spending was compared to larger school districts of about the same enrollment.
I decided to talk to Russia (pronounced Ru-shee here in Ohio), the Miami Valley’s tiniest school district but also one of its best scoring and lowest spending. Superintendent Michael Moore said Russia has done everything it can to keep expenses down. It makes purchases and shares services with other districts already through the Shelby County Educational Service Center. And it is very careful with its spending. There’s not much more to the administration beyond Moore and the school principals.
If you read the story, you’ll see the numbers for yourself. As districts consolidate, they tend to add more administrators, rather than pare down. I found that surprising, and fascinating.
But I’m wondering if there are other views out there. If you believe in consolidation and think it would be a good idea, I’d like to hear from you. Post a comment and try to persuade me that it could still save money.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, School Funding
A decade of change for schools
I got a kick out of looking back 10 years at the first Ohio Supreme Court decision about school funding. In short, the court said funding in Ohio was unconstitutional and ordered the legislature back to court with a plan for improving the system within 12 months.
A decade later, we’re still waiting.
But along the way, Ohio has tried a lot of things — testing, standards, school ratings and choice. Yet, it’s an open question — Are we any better off today?
In Sunday’s DDN, Columbus bureau chief William Hershey and I take a look at:
—How far we’ve come since that first high court decision.
—The legislature’s plan and why lawmakers think it meets the court’s demands.
—The proposed constitutional amendment that would put schools first when it comes to funding state services.
—A whisper campaign backing school consolidation and whether that approach would bring a big savings for Ohio.
What do you think? Are schools better off today than they were in 1997?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: School Funding
School Funding: 10 years after the landmark decision
By Scott Elliott and William Hershey
Staff Writers
The changes have come fast and furious: curriculum standards, high stakes tests, school ratings and the birth of a sprawling school choice program.
In the 10 years since the Ohio Supreme Court declared the school funding system unconstitutional, Ohio has made more dramatic changes to its education system than perhaps in any comparable period in a century.
But have the changes answered the questions first posed by the court on March 24, 1997?
Even Thomas Moyer, chief justice throughout Ohio’s winding decade-long journey through four top court decisions, isn’t so sure.
“Until someone tests their action in court, we don’t know the final answer to the current system,” he said.
House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, and state Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Butler Twp., two of the key players shaping Ohio’s funding system in recent years, say significant improvements have been made.
They point to the billions of dollars the state has spent constructing new schools in response to complaints about the terrible state of school buildings by a coalition of more than 550 of Ohio’s 613 school districts that filed the original lawsuit challenging the state funding system.
And more recently, they say new programs to provide extra aid to poor schools are addressing the court’s concerns about the disparity between wealthy and poor districts. The system, they say, is constitutional.
But the method Ohio uses to pay for schools has few defenders in the education community. And now a new alliance of education groups — teachers unions, school boards, administrators and parents — wants voters in November to amend the constitution to take the authority to determine school funding away from the governor and legislature and put it in the hands of the state board of education and a new advisory commission.
Meanwhile, there is quiet but constant talk about other alternatives, such as finding ways to save money by getting school districts to merge.
Ten years ago the Ohio Supreme Court drew a line in the sand over school funding. Ten years later the line hasn’t completely disappeared.
“I think the inequity that continues to exist within the system is at the core of what the Supreme Court concluded was an unconstitutional feature of our current system,” said Gov. Ted Strickland, who has yet to make his own school funding proposal. “There are some wealthy areas that have all the resources they need to provide a high quality education to their students and there are other schools and districts, low-wealth districts, that have an insufficient level of resources needed to provide a quality education.”
(Image credit: Chris Stewart, DDN)
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Are building blocks for success in place?
(Bradford students walk to class in their $14 million building)
By William Hershey and Scott Elliott
Staff Writers
BRADFORD — The Bradford school district, nestled in a rural village of 2,000 people on the western edge of Miami County, would seem like the poster child for the best changes in Ohio’s school funding system over the last decade.
With the state paying 90 percent of the tab, the district in 2002 replaced two ancient schools with a $14 million state-of-the-art building for kindergarten through 12th grade.
And as the state’s 38th poorest school district, Bradford was near the front of the line when the state doled out extra aid for low wealth districts.
But Treasurer Dawnna Cron said she is hardly a cheerleader for the state’s current funding system. Her five-year forecast was ominous enough that the district in 2006 asked voters for new operating money for the first time in 24 years. And the 0.75 percent income tax the district requested has already failed twice and is back on the ballot again for May.
“On the whole, we’re as frustrated as every other school district,” she said.
Even so, House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, and Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Butler Twp., said the current system is constitutional, thanks to the legislative changes that includes a $3 million-a-day construction program, higher overall spending for education, extra money for low wealth districts and “rational” system — known as building blocks — for determining the basic cost of educating a student.
“The Supreme Court asked the legislature to fix disparities, to address the issue of school buildings,” Husted said. “In many ways, I would say we have been responsive to the (Supreme Court) decision.”
New and rehabilitated school buildings are the most visible results of that system — since 1997 the Ohio School Facilities Commission has spent nearly $5 billion on more than 481 new or renovated school projects — but they are not the only differences.
In 1997, the year of the court’s decision in the DeRolph case, Ohio ranked 24th nationally in how much it spent per pupil. By 2004, it had jumped to 16th. And the legislature has added programs, such as gap aid and parity aid, to help put low wealth districts on more even ground.
Gap aid provides extra state money to districts that have trouble coming up with the local share of the basic cost of a student’s education. Although state and local school districts share this cost, some districts don’t have sufficient property tax millage to generate their local share. Gap aid from the state helps make this up.
Parity aid helps low wealth districts provide benefits beyond the basic cost of an education. Higher wealth districts have more money to spend on teachers, textbooks and everything else connected with a student’s education. Parity aid attempts to equalize this extra spending.
But Cron said those extras don’t go far enough.
“It helps some,” she said. “Just not enough for what it takes now to educate a child.”
As in many districts, expenses at Bradford have outpaced what the district can raise locally. Health care costs alone jumped almost 18 percent last year, Cron said.
The district feels it has no choice but to seek an increase in the 1.75 percent income tax that was first passed in 1982. But if the proposed 0.75 percent income tax finally passes, it would raise the total income tax for schools to 2.5 percent. That’s a heavy burden for a working class village where the school district and a paint company are the only major employers.
“They already feel overtaxed,” Cron said of the district’s residents, some of them Delphi employees. “They feel it’s more the state’s responsibility to pick up the slack.”
Jacobson is the main author of the “building blocks” approach to school funding, the system the Republican legislature put in place for the current two-year budget. It’s based on identifying the ingredients for a “thorough and efficient education” — the standard set by the Ohio Constitution — and pricing those ingredients.
Before the Supreme Court ruled school funding unconstitutional, the state used “residual budgeting,”; Jacobson said. The legislature calculated how much money was available for schools and made the funding formula fit.
“Just give them (schools) whatever you have left over is not constitutional,” he said.
Now the formula — the so-called building blocks — comes first.
“We basically backed up and said the state should determine a level of input that it’s willing to provide to a district,” Jacobson said.
There are three levels of building blocks.
• The first level: All districts must provide one teacher for every 20 students at a certain salary. Funding for administrators, librarians, counselors and other school employees, as well as the costs of books and instructional material, are other building blocks at this level.
• The second level: All districts must provide for academic intervention such as tutoring, professional development for teachers and funding to help teachers use technology to analyze student needs.
• The third level: High poverty districts, including big city school districts like the Dayton schools, get money for reducing class size and for providing all-day kindergarten, extra staff development, outreach programs for dropouts and extra academic intervention.
In Bradford, they’re thankful for what the state has done. They just view it as a first step, not a solution.
“It’s a good start,” Cron said. “It just doesn’t seem to be enough at this point in time.”
(Image credit: Christ Stewart, DDN)
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Ballot issue would overhaul formulas
(Huber Height students show support for teachers during last September’s strike.)
By William Hershey and Scott Elliott
Staff Writers
HUBER HEIGHTS — Victor Oakes doesn’t know how he would vote if a proposal to overhaul school funding makes it on the November ballot, but the Huber Heights father of two school-age children strongly endorses one of the constitutional amendment’s main goals:
Reducing reliance on local property taxes and the frequent elections required to raise those taxes.
“You feel like you’re being nickled and dimed,” said Oakes, 59.
You can’t blame Oakes. Since 1997, the year the Ohio Supreme Court first ruled the state’s school funding system unconstitutional, Huber Heights voters have been asked to vote on 18 school levies. They approved 10 and rejected eight.
They’ll be asked again in May when a 1.5 mill replacement levy is on the ballot, the third levy request in three years.
Supporters of the proposed state constitutional amendment say they want to put an end to what has become an annual rite of spring, summer, fall and winter in some districts: putting school levies on the ballot.
Huber Heights Superintendent William Kirby said he doesn’t think the frequent ballot issues led to the teachers’ five-day strike last year, but added:
“Certainly there is always the challenge of having to go back to the voters time and time again.”
The proposed amendment would limit each district’s contribution to the basic cost of a student’s education to 20 mills — the rate now is 23 mills — and permit revenue from the 20 mills to grow as the value of a district’s property grows. That’s a big change, because now property tax rates are reduced as property value increases, but the amount that goes to schools is capped.
However, just what these changes would cost is not known, even to those backing the amendment. Although the state’s share is expected to increase, the amendment doesn’t include a projected cost or identify a funding source — omissions that have drawn sharp criticism and cost the support of big city mayors like Dayton’s Rhine McLin.
Instead, the amendment would take authority for determining the cost of school funding away from the legislature and governor and transfer it to the state board of education and a new 18-member advisory commission appointed by the board.
Under the proposal, the commission and the board would determine a price tag for the components of a high quality education. The legislature would then be required to deposit the needed tax dollars into a School Trust Fund to pay the state’s share. By a three-fifths majority vote — 60 of 99 votes in the Ohio House and 20 of 33 votes in the state Senate — the legislature could override the funding plan and create its own, subject to approval of the Ohio Supreme Court.
In addition to the provisions on school funding, the amendment would require annual increases in state support for local governments and colleges and universities and provide a property tax reduction for senior citizens and the permanently disabled.
Republican legislative leaders and Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland oppose the amendment.
Critics argue that it is self-serving and, because it lacks a funding source, irresponsible. Also, the amendment would put other services that the state supports — health care, aid to senior citizens, the mentally retarded and disabled and hunger relief — at a disadvantage, critics have charged.
Supporters include the Coalition for Equity & Adequacy in School Funding, the coalition of school districts that successfully sued the state over school funding, and 11 other education, parent and union groups. To get the amendment on the ballot, supporters must turn in petitions signed by 402,275 registered voters to Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner by Aug. 8.
State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Butler Twp., a prime author of the current school funding system, said he long has believed that what the coalition wants is an “IV hooked up to the taxpayers’ wallet.”
“It’s exactly what this is. It’s the first time they’ve been this blatant and I feel vindicated,” he said.
Jim Betts, spokesman for amendment backers, said there was disagreement about whether to put a funding source in the amendment, a provision that McLin and other mayors supported.
Opponents won, he said.
“Any proposal to put a revenue source in the initiative could only be based on what expenses we knew would occur,” Betts said. “The determination of the state board (and advisory commission) is something that nobody can control at this point. The known expenses are spaced over a period of time in such a way that putting a funding source in the Constitution doesn’t make sense.”
An analysis prepared for House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, by the Legislative Service Commission projected that the cost to the state could be more than $1.8 billion because of property tax reductions to local school districts, property tax relief for seniors and the disabled, required higher spending for higher education and local governments and higher per-pupil spending.
However, Betts said that the biggest part of the projected price tag — property tax reductions — wouldn’t start until 2012 and would be phased in over six years. Back in Huber Heights, Victor Oakes said it might be worth paying higher state income or sales taxes if it meant getting local property tax relief.
“I think it would be more easy to understand,” he said, “even if it (the sales tax) was a penny more.”
(image credit: Jim Witmer)
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Consolidation: Savings may be fleeting
By Scott Elliott and William Hershey
Staff Writers
RUSSIA, Ohio — There’s another way that might save education dollars — a strategy more states are trying — but in Ohio it’s practically a dirty word.
Consolidation. Michael Moore has heard that one before.
Moore is superintendent in Russia, the Dayton area’s smallest school district with 460 students. The Shelby County district is one of seven rural districts surrounding the city of Sidney. Six of them have fewer than 1,000 students each.
In fact, one in five of Ohio’s 613 school districts is equally small. In other states, incentives or less friendly nudges are prompting small districts to merge in an effort to free up badly needed cash.
“It’s one of those things that gets talked about a lot,” said Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering.
State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Butler Twp., said consolidation could be the “third rail” in solving school funding woes.
But would merging small districts really bring significant cost savings? A Dayton Daily News analysis says maybe not.
To Moore, savings from consolidation wouldn’t be worth it anyway.
“That does get thrown out quite a bit,” he said. “But there is something to local control, local school boards and a sense of community.”
Close-knit and education-minded Russia is an especially good example, he said.
“We have many people who graduate, go on to college and career elsewhere but still find their way back here,” Moore said. “They like the experience they had in school and they want their kids to have that, too.”
Since Ohio three years ago began calculating a “performance index score,” a measure of achievement across all state tests, Russia has always ranked in the top five of 82 area school districts.
Russia is also one of the lowest spending districts. In 2005-06 it spent $3.5 million, 10 percent less than the next closest Shelby County school district.
Russia spends about $500,000 on administration. If that much could be saved by consolidating each of Ohio’s 122 smallest school districts, it could bring in more than $60 million a year.
But some studies have shown larger consolidated districts add administration costs that eat up any savings.
When the Daily News combined the spending of Shelby County’s seven rural school districts, the 2005-06 figure came to approximately $38.7 million. Compare that to the spending of Warren County’s Lebanon schools — also with just more than 4,900 enrolled — and the cost savings is only $400,000.
Using slightly larger districts tilts the balance the other way. Preble County’s five small school districts enroll 6,900 — roughly the same as Kettering. But the combined school spending in Preble County was $51.9 million. Kettering spent $75.2 million — 41 percent more.
Howard Lee, chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Education, said consolidating large numbers of districts saves money by eliminating “high-dollar” jobs, such as superintendent salaries.
But larger districts also have more administrative costs.
“You may be looking at 10 or 11 superintendents in a territory and if you are you can make a case for huge savings when you cut that personnel,” Lee said. “But you will still need a fairly strong central office. A lot of those superintendents would end up as assistants in charge of various areas.”
Since 1991, North Carolina has aggressively merged districts so that most of its 100 counties have only one school system. But the motivation for mergers there was equal opportunity.
“Several communities had allowed their systems to become racially separated,” Lee said. “There would be a poor, black, low performing city system surrounded by a good, white, wealthy school district.”
The state forced mergers by funding only one school system per county. North Carolina has since gone from 135 school districts in 1991 to 117 today.
The results, Lee said, were mixed. Academic gains were made when mergers were embraced. Cost savings were modest. But there is potential for big savings, he said.
“I am a big advocate of consolidation,” he said. “I think there is an advantage at least of having the schools under a central system serving a larger area and then having that area broken down so communities can have some ownership on the local level. But that requires local school boards to make tough decisions about assignment of students.”
Those decisions will include closing effective and efficient small schools, said Marty Strange, policy director for the Rural School and Community Trust.
“I can flatly say that district consolidation is always a prelude to school consolidation,” he said. “There is just not enough to be gained from district consolidation alone.”
Consolidations will drive up administrative costs, wiping out most savings, Strange said. He pointed to West Virginia, which closed 300 schools in 10 years after a 13 percent drop in enrollment. At the same time, administrative costs jumped 16 percent.
“In small districts, the superintendent is a jack-of-all trades,” Strange said. “They do a lot of functions that are done by specialists at larger districts.”
Small schools are cost effective, he said.
“On a per-graduate basis, a high school with as few as 100 kids has a lower cost-per-graduate than a school with 1,000 kids,” Strange said.
Moore said a merger involving Russia could hurt the quality of education.
“It would change the culture,” he said. “Things are different in different communities. You would lose some of that synergy between community and school.”
(Image credit: Chris Stewart, DDN)
Permalink | | Categories: My Favorite DDN Stories, School Funding
Why we are better off (and worse off)
Take a look at some data that both supports and disputes the notion that Ohio is better off today than before the supreme court first ruled school funding unconstitutional:
Why we are better off
Test scores are up
In the last decade, Ohio schoolchildren have seen their test scores improve, both on state tests and national tests, but their standing compared to other states has not dramatically changed.
On the national assessment of educational progress (also known as the NAEP or the nation’s report card), Ohio has made big gains in math and small gains in reading. The state’s SAT and ACT scores are practically unchanged except on SAT math, where scores are up.
New schools have been built
Ohio is spending $3 million a day on school construction through the Ohio School Facilities Commission. Since 1997, the OSFC has spent more than $5 billion on more than 481 new or renovated school construction projects in more than 190 school districts, completely addressing the facility needs of 114 of those districts.
The commission was funded with Ohio’s $12 billion share of the national tobacco settlement, largely in response to complaints about the poor shape of Ohio’s school buildings. In 1996, a report by the federal General Accounting Office called Ohio’s school buildings the most deteriorated in the nation, with a need for $25 billion in repairs.
Families have more school options
In 1997, the Ohio legislature passed a law permitting charter schools and the first charter schools opened in 1998. An additional 3,100 Ohio kids now attend private schools using state tax money through the voucher program. The combined enrollment of all school choice programs is still less than 4.5 percent of all Ohio schoolchildren.
This year more than 76,000 students attend 310 charter schools statewide using $529 million in state aid. An additional 3,100 Ohio kids now attend private schools using state tax money through the voucher program. Combined that is still less than 4.5 percent of all Ohio schoolchildren.
More money is being spent on education
From 1992 to 1998, per pupil spending increased at an annual rate of 3.4 percent in Ohio. But from 1999 to 2004, the annual rate was 6.4 percent while the same figure nationally was 5.1 percent.
According to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, Ohio ranked 24th in the nation in spending per pupil in 1997 at about $5,500. In 2004, spending per pupil ranked 16th in the nation at $8,963. From 1992 to 1998, per pupil spending increased at an annual rate of 3.4 percent in Ohio but from 1999 to 2004, the annual rate was 6.4 percent while the same figure nationally was 5.1 percent.
Why we are worse off
Curriculum may be narrowing
Some parents and teachers complain that Ohio’s education system overhaul, in favor of a heavy emphasis on testing, crowds out enriching activities in favor more test preparation. In a national study released last year that included Ohio, the Center on Education Policy said 72 percent of school districts reported students spent fewer hours learning music, history, art and other subjects to focus on tested subjects like reading and math.
Property tax burden remains The Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly ordered that Ohio reduce the reliance on property tax to fund schools. But school districts say they are forced to ask voters for more property taxes now than at any time in the past decade.
There’s been a steep climb in the number of school levies across Ohio in the past three years and a corresponding decline in the success rate for those levies.
Between 1996 and 2002, Ohio saw an average of 415 property tax levies each year and voters approved a strong majority — 60 percent. But since 2003, the average number of levies has climbed by more than 100 per year to 530 annually. And for the first time this decade, a majority of levies failed. Only 49 percent of school levies passed between 2002 and 2005 with just 45 percent passing in 2004. The high for the decade was 69 percent of school levies passing in 2000.
Choice programs are costly
Opponents of school choice say money lost by school districts when students enroll elsewhere makes it more difficult to manage complicated budgets in large urban districts. Dayton Public Schools alone has transferred $183 million to charter schools over the last decade — the equivalent of its annual core operating budget for one full school year.
The district’s charter school financial hit grew quickly — doubling every two to three years from 1999 to 2005. The charter school transfer amount for Dayton was — $299,000 in 1998-99, $7.5 million in 1999-2000, $15 million in 2000-01, $19.9 million in 2001-02; $27 million in 2002-03; $35 million in 2003-04; $43 million in 2004-05.
Districts say cash is drying up
Lawmakers made three big changes that cut revenue to school districts in the past three years. Ohio is phasing out an inventory tax on business and an adjustment for districts in expensive counties. It also cut “parity aid” for low wealth districts. These changes cost Dayton Public Schools $10 million a year, or about 5.5 percent of its core budget. Ohio also will phase out tangible personal property tax. Dayton receives $25 million a year from this tax, which the state is reducing by 20 percent a year. School districts are being reimbursed by the state for those lost dollars, but there is no plan for reimbursement after 2011.
Permalink | | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories, School Construction, School Funding
