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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 05
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Editorial: School levies put voters in tough spot
The defeat of so many school levies on Tuesday can’t be attributed to just one thing.
That said, Fairborn’s Dave Scarberry spoke for a lot of disappointed superintendents — all across the state, not just in the Dayton region — when he said, “I think people are voting with their wallets, and voting with their home situations, and you can’t blame them right now. …(W)hen gas is $4.19 a gallon, food costs are going sky-high … they’ve got to end it someplace.”
His recognition that voters are not the enemy is a powerful and important point.
So many people have lost their jobs or had their pay cut or are struggling to stay even, the expectation that people would vote to increase their taxes was a long shot in many communities.
Eight local school districts turned down requests to raise their taxes. On the other hand, five renewals — requests to renew tax levies that are already on the books — passed.
The local pattern was repeated across the state. Of the 85 instances where school districts asked for new money, only 30 passed. Almost all renewals were approved.
Besides being worried about their own economic uncertainty, voters — the few who turned out for an especially low-profile election — had to be confused. The news coming out of Columbus — about the state money that schools heavily depend on — has been wildly conflicting.
Schools are being cut under the pending state budget, but exactly how much they’re being cut will vary greatly, depending on the district and depending on decisions that haven’t been made yet. It’s not final, for example, how the governor and legislature are going to spread the cuts: Will suburban districts, for instance, really take bigger cuts than urban and rural districts?
And there are other questions, too. How fast, for example, is the tangible personal property tax — a tax on certain business equipment and assets — going to be eliminated?
Schools were counting on the reduction being gradual, but it might not be.
Meanwhile, the debate about Senate Bill 5, which dramatically changes Ohio’s collective-bargaining rules, has clouded the picture. Supporters say it will save school districts money. Many school districts beg to differ. (There’s disagreement, for instance, about whether new mandates relating to employees paying more for their health insurance will save money; some districts already have employees paying the newly required 15 percent.)
Now that the effort to repeal the collective-bargaining law changes is gearing up, there’s doubt about when or if any savings related to contract changes will be realized.
Asking voters to sort through so much conflicting information is asking a lot. Some schools have good cases that they need more money. Some critics have valid criticisms about spending.
For many voters, a complicated choice gets reduced to a sincerely held belief that they can’t afford to pay more or, on the other hand, that they want to protect their schools.
Ohio has long clung to the assumption that “local control” is the best insurance to make sure that schools are supported and are responsive to the demands of the community. That approach comes with cost and risk. The cost is that local communities are expected to financially support their schools, and the risk is that support is not guaranteed.
Some districts will be back either in August or November with another request. They will be hoping for the economy to have picked up, and hoping they will be able to say with more certainty what the downsides of not passing a levy will be.
What’s clear even now is that they will still have a hard sell. Though levies were never easy to pass, we’re in new, tougher times.
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