State education budgets across the country were temporarily buoyed by an infusion of federal stimulus money earlier this year.???? However, some districts that received a significant amount of stimulus dollars, like South-Western City Schools outside Columbus, Ohio, are still facing major budget cuts, as Sam Dillon noted in yesterday's New York Times.
The Buckeye State will need to find roughly $450 million per year to fill the education funding gap that the federal stimulus dollars covered this biennium.???? But the funding conundrum doesn't stop there.???? By agreeing to Governor Ted Strickland's "evidence-based" funding model, Ohio's legislature has put the state on the hook to provide an additional $3.8 billion in school funding by 2019.???? Achieving this would mark a dramatic and unprecedented increase in state funding for schools here.
To get a sense of just how large these spending promises are, take a look at this chart provided by the Columbus Dispatch. For example, in order for the new model to be fully funded, state aid to Columbus City Schools would have to increase by 71.3 percent in the next decade. For other districts, the spending increase goes as high as 342 percent of 2010 spending levels.
One doesn't have to be an economist to wonder where this funding will come from. As Mike Lafferty pointed out in last week's Ohio Education Gadfly, anemic state tax collections and current legal threats to Ohio's budget represent just a few reasons to worry about Ohio's ability to keep its funding promises.???? As such, local school leaders can't shake the looming question of whether the full funding promised by the plan will ever be realized, and, as the Dispatch reported yesterday, they aren't optimistic:
"We've been promised large increases in the past, and we haven't seen any come to fruition, so my gut would tell me that could possibly happen in the future," said Hugh Garside, treasurer of South-Western schools, who doesn't think the money will be there for his district's promised 58 percent funding increase.
And:
The proposed increase for Dublin Schools is 81 percent, but Superintendent David Axner has a hard time looking beyond the funding cuts hitting him in the next two years.
"I am not very confident that our district will see any increase, and we are preparing for more reductions," he said. "Even when we add students we continue to get a reduction in the budget."
And:
No area district stands to gain more than fast-growing Olentangy, whose state funding would grow 342 percent, from $8 million in 2011 to $35.5 million in 2019.
But Julie Wagner Feasel, president of the Olentangy Board of Education, called Strickland's plan "pie in the sky."
"I am not optimistic at all," she said of the chances her district will see the money that is being promised. "We know the status of Ohio's budget right now. Where is the money going to come from? Ohio is always slow to recover during bad economic times."
The governor isn't answering that question, instead insisting simply that Ohio's economy will rebound and that he will maintain his commitment to public education. In the face of a monumental fiscal crisis, however, the governor needs to realize that optimism and commitment do not pay the bills.??????????
