Some schools will lose state funds

By Denise Dick

and Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

COLUMBUS

Boardman and Jackson-Milton schools are among districts expected to take a hit with a loss of overall state funding.

State education officials said basic state foundation aid to schools won’t decrease for any district. But Gov. John Kasich this week vetoed the tangible personal property tax supplement for fiscal year 2017. The money was meant to reimburse school districts for what they lost through elimination of the tangible personal property tax.

Other Mahoning Valley districts also might be affected by the governor’s vetos, but final numbers aren’t yet available.

The Ohio Department of Education won’t compile funding totals for districts until after the start of the new school year.

“We are about the work of implementing the contents of House Bill 64,” said Aaron Rausch, budget director for the state education department. “We will begin to implement those changes. When the bill becomes effective at the end of September, we will update all of the per-pupil amounts and data....”

Boardman Superintendent Frank Lazzeri doesn’t know yet the impact of the changes. Kasich also vetoed funding guarantees for those considered wealthy districts, but Lazzeri is unhappy about the loss of any funding for the district.

“This is just another slap in the face to our district,” he said. “We hardly get any money to build new buildings or to do any capital improvements and now they’re taking more money away from us.”

Lazzeri takes offense to Kasich’s comments that the money eliminated would have gone mostly to districts that are better off and able to raise taxes locally.

“How arrogant for him to say that,” he said.

That means the district could potentially have to go back to voters, asking for more money, Lazzeri said.

“So the taxes that are based on businesses in our community, what he’s saying is that money should not go back to the Boardman schools and the Boardman community but it should go back to Columbus and be redistributed by the governor and other people with the state,” he said. “That’s displacing taxes. It’s telling a local community that you can afford to tax yourself more; you have enough money.”

Jackson-Milton schools’ loss from the TPP supplement elimination is about $159,000 in fiscal year 2017, Superintendent Kirk Baker said.

“It definitely affects us,” he said.

Because the TPP supplement wasn’t figured into the district’s five-year forecast, it won’t have to change plans because of the funding loss.

“I think we’ll be fairly OK” as long as more money isn’t reduced, Baker said.

Struthers Schools won’t lose money because of the TPP supplement veto, but Superintendent Joseph Nohra said the district expects to lose money in state and federal money such as funds for economically disadvantaged and special education students.

He doesn’t know the exact amount but expects it to be significant.

“It’s probably hundreds of thousands that will need to be offset,” Nohra said.

The district pays teachers from the special education money so in order to retain those teachers, the district will have to pay them out of the general fund.

The district will see a 7 percent increase in state aid in FY16 compared to FY15 and a nearly 4 percent increase for FY17.

“We’re not as big winners as it appears to be,” Nohra said.

About nine years ago, the district wrestled with finance problems and had to reduce staff and lay off personnel.

Many of those positions have never been restored.

State Superintendent Richard Ross said the budget also includes incentives for expanding career technical programs, an extra $40 million for early childhood education, $10 million for expanded classes enabling high schoolers to earn college credit and incentives for higher graduation and reading proficiency rates, among other changes.

“We’ll actually be funding school districts based on evidence that they are successfully educating our children,” Ross said.

But Ross and others did not have details about how Kasich’s vetoes would affect overall school funding.

The governor deleted a wealthy school district funding guarantee and a tangible personal property reimbursement supplement for certain districts.

The administration has said the TPP supplement should be phased out, allowing the state’s school funding formula to work as intended.

That would mean more money for districts with less capacity to raise funds on their own and less money for districts with declining enrollments.

An earlier estimate using enrollment totals from the fall put the second year TPP supplement at more than $84 million. An updated projection, using more recent enrollment statistics, put the total back at about $78.3 million.