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State budget passage snagged

Education funding fuels debate between House, Senate bills

Staff, wire report

COLUMBUS — The way Ohio pays for K-12 education now and in the future is at the heart of a debate over the final version of the state’s $75 billion two-year budget.

The budget approved by the GOP-controlled House in April included elements of the bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan developed over more than three years. The goal of that plan was a sustainable funding process lasting several years.

The GOP-majority Ohio Senate ditched that approach and introduced its own plan as part of the budget, which it passed along partisan lines Wednesday.

House and Senate lawmakers must reconcile differences between the two versions by month’s end.

Also passed in the Senate version of the budget was a pathway out of the Academic Distress Commission for Youngstown City Schools, as well as districts in East Cleveland and Lorain.

The Senate education plan assumes a $6,110 annual base cost per student. The House plan provides slightly more over the two-year funding cycle, but increases to $7,203 when fully phased in over six years.

The Senate plan builds on the work done to create the Fair School Funding Plan, but avoids uncontrolled spending in future years, Senate Finance Chairman Matt Dolan said Wednesday during debate over the budget. The Senate version provides $232 million more than the House version.

The priorities laid out by the Fair School Funding Plan were to create “a reliable, predictable and rational plan,” Dolan said. “The plan we’re putting forward today does that.”

That predictability will be the basis of any agreement the Senate reaches with the House, Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, said.

Another benefit of the Senate education plan was to restore $650 million in funding to specifically address non-academic needs of children, especially poor students, through social services, Sen. Louis Blessing III, a Cincinnati Republican, said.

Senate Democrats unsuccessfully urged their Republican colleagues to return to the House funding plan.

The GOP Senate education plan “really fails to address a historic opportunity that we have now to try to deal with, in a fair and equitable and adequate way, the funding over education,” said Sen. Vernon Sykes of Akron, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Advocates for the Fair School Funding Plan say it does not make sense to ignore the work of both Democrats and Republicans and a broad swath of educators who developed it.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Ohio schoolchildren,” former Democratic state representative John Patterson of Ashtabula, a retired teacher who helped develop the plan, said Tuesday.

He said the plan allows for “predictability for school districts so they can provide the programming to the best of our abilities that allows for the utmost opportunities for all of our children.”

The House plan also has the backing of both major Ohio teachers unions, the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio Federation of Teacher, who on Wednesday called on Senate lawmakers to adopt the plan’s elements.

The Senate’s school-funding proposal also would require that the state, not individual districts, pay charter schools directly for the first time. In addition, the legislation allows public school districts to operate an online school for students, including providing free access to the internet and a computer.

That measure was an outcome of districts developing online systems during the coronavirus pandemic and wanting to continue that option, Dolan said.

The Senate version of the budget also:

• Provides an across-the-board personal income tax cut of 5 percent.

• Raises the eligibility level for poor families accessing publicly funded day care from those making 130 percent of the federal poverty level to 142 percent, and provides $50 million to discount co-payments for such day care. The Senate plan also eliminates the requirement that day cares achieve a quality of care rating to be listed in the state system. Child care advocates say that change will hurt the quality of care available for Ohioans who need the publicly funded option.

• Mandates that physicians who provide back-up coverage at local hospitals as part of required patient-transfer agreements with abortion clinics must practice within 25 miles of the clinics.

“In this budget, the Ohio Senate cut taxes and provided funding for a number of projects that will have a direct impact in the Mahoning Valley,” said State Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem. “I am proud we are taking significant steps to help the working men and women of Ohio, as well as local students who will make up the workforce of tomorrow.”

Rulli highlighted a number of key provisions that will have a major impact in the local community and across the state of Ohio, including:

• Securing $5 million for Eastern Gateway Community College to create new workforce initiatives;

• Appropriating $1 million for the Mahoning Valley Campus of Care in Weathersfield;

• Allocating $425,000 each fiscal year to support at risk youth at Mahoning County High School;

• Providing $150,000 in FY 2022 for the city of East Liverpool to acquire, demolish, or rehabilitate abandoned houses and conduct property cleanup activities;

• Appropriating $200,000 in FY 2022 for Youngstown State University’s Mahoning Valley Workforce Partnership;

• Allocating $150,000 to buy land for a new fire station for the Lisbon Village Fire Department.

news@tribtoday.com

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