Increasing rejection of levies for Ohio schools is troubling

At first glance, results from Tuesday’s general election on school tax issues in the Mahoning Valley and throughout Ohio appear to illustrate the public’s confidence in their local schools and their willingness to finance their operations.

After all, in the Mahoning Valley 15 of 19 tax issues for public education won voter approval. That’s a positive passage rate of about 84 percent. Statewide voters approved 65 percent of the 163 school levies on the ballot.

But on closer analysis, those bright perceptions fade fast. Fourteen of those 15 approved issues were renewal levies, meaning boards of education were seeking no additional funding from taxpayers. And unlike eight districts elsewhere in Ohio where even status-quo funding was rejected, 100 percent of renewals passed in the Valley.

Only one school district in the tri-county area — McDonald — sought and won voter support for additional taxation. In three other districts — South Range, Lordstown and Lakeview — voters handily snubbed their noses at pleas for additional resources. That’s a failure rate of 75 percent, slightly higher than the 71 percent failure rate for new school taxes statewide.

Even more disconcerting is the fact that Ohioans are showing an increased willingness to reject the generally well-reasoned pleas of school districts for slightly additional help. Passage rates for renewal levies fell from 97 percent in 2013 to 91 percent this November; failure rates for additional levies increased from 64 percent to 71 percent over the same time span.

Such enormously high rejection rates to appeals by school districts for new funding is disturbing. There is only so much penny pinching school districts can accomplish without seriously endangering academic quality and fiscal responsibility.

The increasing pace of voter repudiation of public school issues should serve as yet another wake-up call to Ohio education leaders and state legislators to fix Ohio’s dysfunctional education system once and for all.

Unconstitutional funding system

The state’s school funding system has been declared unconstitutional several times over the past 16 years, and despite some minor tinkering, it remains broken. Overreliance of the local propeprty tax has created unequal schools. Rich school districts with high property values provide better education than poor districts with low values, which runs counter to the state’s constitutional guarantee of a “thorough and efficient” education for every student.

Tuesday’s election results reinforced the failure of that system.

Nationwide, the average for support from state government to local schools is about 45 percent; in Ohio, state support accounts for only about 29 percent of school districts’ budgets, meaning Ohio taxpayers are burdened much more heavily than average Americans.

In addition, state government also does local school districts no favors when mandating new programs and standards without backing up those mandates with sufficient resources to fund them.

Clearly the crisis in Ohio school funding first exposed in the 1997 DeRolph decision has not eased. That’s why it is incumbent upon our newly elected or reelected state lawmakers to commit themselves to reform. Until they do, the quality and solvency of our state’s public education system will continue to hang in a balance.