Board of Education meetings are at the Hamilton City School District Board of Education and Janet T. Baker Educational Training Center, 533 Dayton St.
Recently, the Journal-News reported the district is facing financial woes due to cuts at the federal and state level.
About 70% of Hamilton’s funding is from the state budget. If current state funding trends continue, the district could be more than $14.1 million in the red by fiscal year 2028, according to the school’s financial outlook.
“Any little change at the state level, it’s huge for us,” said Assistant Superintendent Mike Wright in December.
Hamilton Schools has not passed an operating levy in more than 30 years.
“There are various factors,” said Hamilton City Schools Superintendent Andrea Blevins in a December interview with the Journal-News. “It’s not all the formula itself. Yes, the increases that were not built in to continue to fund the formula hurt us, but our enrollment is dropping dramatically in Hamilton.”
Today, Hamilton is a district with approximately 8,200 students, whereas a decade ago, it had around 10,000 students. School choice has played a part in the enrollment drop, as there aren’t fewer school-aged children, Wright said in December. Data shows there are around 300 more school-aged kids in the city than there were five years ago.
“It’s more choices,” he said, referring to charter, private schools and dropout recovery schools, as well as homeschooling.
Butler Tech has also impacted school enrollment. Students are dually associated with Butler Tech and their home high school; the number of students has increased more than 2.5 times since Butler Tech added the lottery enrollment process with its traditional application process.
More than 425 students who otherwise would be at Hamilton High School are at Butler Tech, according to the school district.
“All of those programs are great for our kids, so it’s hard to argue that there’s not value, but all those things have taken kids out of our district,” Blevins said.
State Superintendent Paul Craft said one of his primary focuses is “making sure that Ohio’s 1.6 million kids and Hamilton’s 8,000 kids interact every day with educators who are well-qualified and show proper standards, moral character.”
That is the goal for Blevins and her staff as they aim to keep standards high despite declining funding. She said the district is addressing these challenges, but is focused on consolidation rather than the elimination of programs.
Hamilton Schools is the 18th largest school district in Ohio.
Reporter Michael D. Pitman contributed to this report.
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