The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Strickland says he’ll go to mat over school reform plan

Kiichiro Sato/STF Gov. Ted Strickland has said changing the structure "is more important than the dollar amount going into education." Associated Press file photo

ENLARGE PHOTO

Area religious leaders rally for health care reform
New 24 min. ago
Masked gunman attempted to rob wireless store, police say
3:25 p.m.
Local Buckeye Bash a “bust”
1:18 p.m.
Multiple cases of teacher misconduct a wakeup call for Northmont
11:00 a.m.
Ferguson attempts suicide after being found guilty on all 32 counts
10:05 a.m.
> More headlines

By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 6:11 PM Saturday, May 30, 2009

Hurry up!

That was Democrat Ted Strickland’s message to Republican Gov. Bob Taft and the GOP-controlled state legislature back in 2003 when Strickland was in the U.S. House. Strickland wanted them to make Ohio’s school funding system constitutional right now, whatever the price.

“Budgetary concerns aside, the state cannot continue to operate under laws that are unconstitutional simply because public coffers are not overflowing,” Strickland wrote in a friend of the court brief.

Strickland now is governor. With state coffers hardly overflowing again, he unveiled his plan this year not only to fix school funding but also to overhaul how Ohio’s children are educated. If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be — in his own words — a failed governor.

Strickland has served a little over two years in office and is expected to seek a second and final four-year term next year. However, his proposed education reform calls for phasing the plan in over eight years, a timetable stretched to 10 years in the House-passed version of the state budget.

The House, controlled by Strickland’s fellow Democrats, modified but did not drastically alter Strickland’s school plan, while the GOP-controlled Senate next week is expected to approve a budget without much of Strickland’s “evidence-based model” for schools.

The model identifies key ingredients for student success such as all-day kindergarten, longer school days and years, nurses, tutors and better-prepared teachers, and then identifies how much it would cost to pay for them. Supporters say it is the opposite of “residual budgeting,” which means working backward from however much money the governor and legislature decide to spend on schools to the amount allocated for different purposes.

It would cost about $2.7 billion more than the House budget provides for schools in the first year of the new budget to fully enact Strickland’s plan.

The governor has no regrets about his strong words in 2003, which followed four Ohio Supreme Court rulings that the funding system is unconstitutional. The court’s ruling in each case was similar: an overeliance on the property tax makes it harder for low-wealth districts to raise as much money for schools as high-wealth districts.

“If someone wants me to say I spoke in a harsher way than I should have, they can reach that conclusion,” Strickland said. “But what we are doing that has not been done is we are changing the structure of the way we approach education funding.”

Changing the structure “is more important than the dollar amount going into education,” Strickland said.

A loud “amen” comes from William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, the group whose lawsuit against the state produced the unconstitutional rulings.

“It identifies the components of a high-quality education and it has a built-in mechanism to evaluate and assess and update and revise and alter components and funding mechanisms as the years pass,” said Phillis.

But opponents such as Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights, a member of the House Finance Committee, said the plan doesn’t necessarily identify the ingredients for a successful education for all students and the 10-year phase in is “not reality.”

“It’s pie in the sky,” said Morgan.

Ohio Senate Republicans on Friday released their version of the two-year, $53 billion state budget, and in it, Strickland’s school reform plan got a thorough reworking, including restoring funding cuts to more than 300 charter schools. The final version probably won’t emerge until the end of June.

Strickland concedes that even if he wins approval of his plan, there’s no guarantee that future legislatures and governors will renew it, a necessity for a 10-year phase in.

“One governor cannot make decisions that are binding on a future governor,” Strickland said. “Neither can a legislature make decisions that are binding on a future legislature.”

He noted, however, that he and the legislature in 2007 continued the overhaul of the state tax system started in 2005.

“I do believe that in a democracy....the voters would make a decision as to whether that legislature acted responsibly if they were to fail to follow through of if they were to back off a commitment made by a previous legislature,” Strickland said.

Allan Odden of the University of Wisconsin, one of the professors whose research inspired Strickland’s plan, said the typical time for phasing in school finance reform seems to be two to four years. Eight to 10 years is long, but if people buy into the idea it could work, he said.

Strickland’s plan has been endorsed by the state’s two major teachers’ unions and groups representing school administrators and school boards as well as the Ohio Business Roundtable, made up of the chief executives of the state’s major businesses. The Ohio 8 Coalition, a group of big city school districts including Dayton’s, also has endorsed the plan.

It doesn’t have the support of Sugarcreek Local Schools in Greene County, however. Superintendent Keith St. Pierre said the district already provides a high-quality education — as evidenced by the state report card — and some ingredients in Strickland’s model aren’t needed.

1 | 2 next page »

Highlights of Gov. Ted Strickland’s plan for Ohio schools:

All-day kindergarten

Longer school year

Longer school day

15-1 student-teacher ratio for grades K-3

Residency program for new teachers

Career ladder for teachers

Replace Ohio Graduation Test with ACT Plus test

Reduce the need for local districts to seek approval of levies

Share this article