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State should put up or shut up
(by Dave Lange - February 03, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
State should put up or shut up
The Chardon Board of Education is bracing for the anticipated announcement Feb. 14 by School Superintendent Joseph Bergant II of $1.2 million in budget cuts that he has said will affect teaching positions and educational programs. District Treasurer Stephanie Swain has planned for at least $500,000 in state funding cuts this year.
If the Chardon district doesn't receive additional revenue soon, an additional $1.8 million will have to be slashed after the next school year.
The West Geauga Board of Education voted two weeks ago to cut costs for the 2011-12 school year by $750,000. School Superintendent Thomas Diringer is looking at a 20 percent reduction in funding from the State of Ohio next year, although exact figures from the budget-slashing administration of new Gov. John Kasich are not yet known. Despite a lack of critical information from the state, West Geauga faces an edict from the state to act on an impending $1 million deficit in fiscal-year 2013.
Unlike the Chardon and West Geauga districts, where local voters turned down money issues last November, voters in the Solon School District approved a 6.9-mill operating levy last May. Nevertheless, Solon School Board President Julie Glavin also pointed to trouble ahead with state funding cuts. In particular, she referred to the Ohio Legislature's abolishment of tangible permanent property taxes on businesses. When the state ends its reimbursement of that lost revenue in 2013, the Solon district stands to lose $11 million a year, 17 percent of its operating budget.
People who care about the education of their children might be wondering whatever happened to DeRolph vs. State of Ohio. That case, initiated in 1991, contended that the state had failed to provided an "efficient" educational system, as required by the Ohio Constitution. Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in 1994, Perry County Court Judge Linton Lewis Jr. stated that "public education is a fundamental right in the state of Ohio."
The Ohio Supreme Court agreed in 1996, finding that Ohio's heavy reliance on local property taxes for school funding was unconstitutional. As the legislative shysters sought to sidestep genuine rectification of gross inequities, the high court ruled again and again and again, in 2000, 2001 and 2002, that the funding method remained unconstitutional.
Even as the politicians in Columbus continue to defy the constitutional mandate to provide an efficient system of public education and disregard repeated court orders to properly fund that fundamental right of Ohio children, the derelicts who call themselves representatives of the people keep pilfering their tax dollars.
The same state government that should have lost all credibility in the realm of public education continues to compound unfunded mandates upon local schools -- from purposeless proficiency tests that stifle innovation and stigmatize lower-income districts to preferential open-enrollment and post-secondary options for certain select students. The latest costly mandate is all-day kindergarten.
Meanwhile, the state siphons off precious tax dollars for dogmatic experimentation with private-school vouchers and charter schools, which have proven to be racially divisive, rife with graft and dismal in educational performance.
Too much of the taxpayers' anger is being misdirected at local school boards, instead of at the state government that so justly deserves their wrath. It's long past the time for Columbus to put up or shut up.
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