Governor vows closer oversight of school districts

Gov. Ted Strickland called for “an unprecedented level of school district accountability and transparency” in his State of the State address today.

School districts that fail to meet that level will be shut down, Strickland said during the speech that lasted more than an hour.

School districts will undergo performance audits overseen by the Department of Education to make sure they are maintaining academic and operating standards established by the state, Strickland said.

Districts will report their spending plans before each school year and then account for every dollar at the conclusion of the school year.

“Just as we provide an academic report card for our schools, we will provide parents, public officials, and taxpayers an annual fiscal and operational report card for every school district,” Strickland said. “That means that when we send districts funding to help students who need additional attention and instruction, we will now be able to track our dollars to see that they directly reach those students.”

Failure to comply with the standards, Strickland said, would require districts to receive technical assistance from the state to correct the problems. If the problems continue, the district would be required to present a plan outlining how it would reach compliance.

“Continued failure would result in the district being placed in receivership, with entirely new leadership installed,” Strickland said. “And finally, if the district remains non-compliant, the State Board of Education would be required to revoke the school district’s charter.”

Strickland, a Democrat formerly of Lisbon, also called for a change in school funding.

“In the current system, when the state calculates how much tax revenue a school district has, the state uses phony numbers,” he said. “You may have heard this called ‘phantom revenue.’ For example, in many school districts, rising property values do not produce additional property tax revenue. But the state formula for school aid assumes districts do get additional tax revenue. That’s not logical, and it results in many districts being punished because the formula says they have an abundance of phantom dollars that don’t actually exist.”

Strickland said his plan would no longer ask districts to pay their bills with “phantom dollars.”

“Instead, my plan lowers what our local taxpayers are expected to contribute to local schools from 23 mills to 20 mills,” he said. “The state will assume responsibility for providing the difference between what those 20 mills raise and the cost of the full range of educational resources our students need according to our evidence-based approach.”

Strickland said the state’s share of education funding would rise to 55 percent over the next two years and grow to 59 percent when his program is fully implemented. He did not say where the money would come from.