Goal of Ohio school funding plan: No new levies to meet state minimums

Ohio lawmakers struggle how to fund schools equitably as new plan slowly takes shape.

Lawmakers hoping to overhaul the way Ohio funds its public schools laid out a critical part of their plan Wednesday to the House Finance Committee: how the state would divvy up its dollars to districts.

It’s called a distribution methodology, and it would use a district’s wealth (local property values) and capacity (local incomes) to determine how much money schools should be able to raise from their residents. Once that figure is calculated, an amount can be determined for how much the state needs to contribute to keep funding relatively even among districts of sometimes vastly different wealth.

The goal: configuring the new formula in such a way that it doesn’t leave some districts facing a tax increase if they want to fund what the state says it would cost to educate a typical student in their district.

Read more: https://www.dispatch.com/news/20191113/goal-of-ohio-school-funding-plan-no-new-levies-to-meet-state-minimums
(Columbus Dispatch)