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Governor candidates offer proposals for fixing public education

Blackwell, Strickland both have funding plans, but they have different opinions on use of charter schools.

By Laura A. Bischoff

Staff Writer

COLUMBUS | — Democrat Ted Strickland and Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell laid out their plans for funding and improving public education for Ohio's 1.8 million students in speeches to local school officials on Thursday.

Their differences are stark.

Blackwell proposed reallocating millions of dollars to schools from Medicaid reforms, requiring districts to spend at least 65 percent of operational money in classrooms and expanding charter schools and vouchers to give students choices. He added that he thinks noncore services, such as busing, can be done less expensively by private contractors.

Strickland offered no specifics, but promised to work with the General Assembly to revamp the school funding system so that it is constitutional. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four times that the current system unconstitutional.

He said charter schools trouble him and dismissed Blackwell's "65-cent solution."

"Anyone who looks to a 65-cent solution can't have much respect for local control," he said.

While Blackwell said collective bargaining and civil service rules need to be reworked to give management a chance to streamline government, Strickland affirmed that he believes collective bargaining has a place in public education.

Blackwell, whose wife Rosa is superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools, committed to trying to increase state K-12 funding from 47 percent of the state budget to 57 percent over the next four years.

He said a Medicaid reform study identified $3 billion in possible savings and a chunk of that could be reallocated to schools, without raising taxes.

Barbara Shaner, associate director of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, said administrators were concerned about school funding being pitted against cuts in other state-funded programs such as Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, disabled and elderly.

Kettering school officials Steven Clark, the district treasurer, and George Bayless, a board member, expressed some skepticism about Blackwell's proposal to require districts to spend 65 cents of every dollar on classroom instruction.

"It comes down to that old saying that for every complicated problem, there's a simple solution and it's probably wrong," Clark said.