The gravy train is over for the public schools. The public trough has run dry. Recent defeats of school levies in Canfield and Poland, as well as the Boardman Trustees removing the police levy from the May ballot, are ominous signs of things to come. With a possible referendum on Ohio SB 5 on the ballot in November, those in support of repeal have their work cut out for them. When Canfield defeats a school levy, and Boardman defeats a police levy, you know there is trouble.
At the heart of the matter is the manner of funding local schools. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that Ohio’s manner of school funding was unconstitutional. Based primarily on local property taxes, the Supreme Court ruled that disparate tax rates between school systems provided unequal education between the schools. The State of Ohio was directed to even it out. The state cut back additional state funding to the more affluent school systems, and increased funding to the inner city school. The more money generated from property taxes in a system, the less state money it would receive.
So…Youngstown City Schools gets more money from Ohio than Canfield Schools. Here is the end result. The cost per student in Youngstown City Schools is approximately $13,000.00 per pupil. The cost per pupil in Canfield is about $8,000.00 per pupil. Youngstown City has a low property tax rate, and gets approx $4,000.00/pupil of its money from the state. Canfield has a high property tax rate, and is right now being reduced to almost zero from the state. Notwithstanding, Youngstown City School is among the worst performing systems in Ohio. Canfield is among the highest. This ultimately shows the fallacy of the current approach to education. MONEY IS NOT NOW, NOR EVER HAS BEEN, THE ANSWER!!!!!! The State of Ohio effectively punishes the most successful schools, and rewards those that are in the crapper. Learning, or lack thereof, is as much cultural as anything else. The net result is those school systems which have the highest property tax rates are now in dire financial straits. While Youngstown City Schools is coming out of fiscal emergency…Canfield Schools is headed the other direction.
Not that that the successful schools are more than partly to blame. Mismanagement of local school money is notorious and widespread. There is no constant vision or plan coming out of local school boards who are usually too willing to jump into to bed with the hired school administration. Cutting back teacher salaries while giving raises to Superintendents and Principals and hiring more and more administrative staff is unconscionable, yet it happens all the time. Hiring practices based on hiring local district citizens or who can coach volleyball doesn't help. And people don’t like to be fooled. Don’t tell the public that the teachers are taking a 1% pay cut when in reality they giving up 1% of a 3% raise. Dudes, this is the age of the internet. This stuff comes out and people are miffed.
Nor do the edicts from the do-gooders in the Federal government and formerly liberal federal courts help. Mainstreaming has been carried way to far; unfettered accommodation for special needs students WAY BEYOND THE PALE for what should be done or needs to be done; teachers being made responsible for making sure students eat breakfast and lunch; cell phones and total lack of discipline either by school policy or federal order; and schools developing policies based on avoiding frivolous lawsuits rather than what is good for the students...all of this is reflected in our disastrous public school system.
No one seems to know where Kasich is headed with the schools, but the anger and dissatisfaction is palpable. People are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Ohio SB 5 seems to piss off all the right people, so it must be doing something right. And for those of you in Poland…hiding salary schedules which are public records is verboten. Inquiring minds want to know, and are entitled to know.
Unfortunately, I don't think Ohio SB 5 is the answer to the problems in the schools and more likely than not will make it worse. On the other hand, Kasich is right. We can’t keep going on the same way we have been going. The public trough has run dry, and the school systems, the courts, the legislature, and the governor must move to fix the problem before total bankruptcy.
Above all, if the non-financial issues such as discipline and non-sensical maintreaming and unreasonable public accomodation are not fixed, I will guaranty you that within ten years, you won’t have to worry about measuring how well little Johnny and Jane can read or do math. They won't be able to do either.
1 comment:
I won't bother pointing out the mistakes in grammer or spelling in your post as detrimental to your argument(try actually proofreading and not just relying on spellcheck) but isn't it funny that the Boardman school system, located between the two most snobby suburbs of Youngstown (and don't they both hate being called suburbs of anywhere?) is the one that tops the state of Ohio when it comes to its music program, which includes not one or two but three orchestras, all of which receive superior ratings at every contest they enter? How many orchestras do Canfield or Poland offer in their high schools? Despite maintaining excellence in the arts and education in general, Boardman schools required no levy this time around, unlike its neighbors. Yet people tend to gravitate towards Canfield and Poland for what they perceive to be an overall better life in those communities. No one forced you to leave Boardman, you left on your own. As for the Boardman Police, isn't a staff of 47 officers (or more than 1 per every thousand residents)adequate for the amount and types of crime in Boardman? Perhaps the citizens of Boardman understand that good schools and educated citizens are a better deterent to crime than simply hiring more police?
So, what's the solution to funding education and police? Canfield and Poland are too concerned about their independance to ever go along with regionalization of either the police or the schools, yet the control of costs and the sharing of resources would seem like compelling reasons for doing so, especially in these tough economic times that you, from your posh, comfortable Canfield home, are more than willing to complain about without offering any viable solution. Regionalization would put the communities of Canfield, Poland and Boardman on an equal footing in the quality of service provided. Better yet, regionalization could allow for specialization between the current school systems where students interested in qualtiy education including music and the arts might go to Boardman High while those interested in snob culture, intellectual mediocrity, republican ideology and sports could continue to attend the Canfield or Poland schools. Those Canfield and Poland students can then continue the mythology of blaming Boardman for lowering the standards. In reality, Boardman can do fine all by itself but without Boardman between them I question whether or not Poland and Canfield could continue to delude themselves into thinking they, alone, have it all.
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