HOWLAND — The Board of Education on Monday gained a better idea of where things stand in terms of revenue sources for the district.

Superintendent Kevin Spicher explained to board members and residents during his briefing at Monday’s meeting that he had some “pretty good” information after chats with state representatives and officials on education.

“School choice is a very important part of Ohio’s family right now, so we’ve got to continue to do our work and do our diligence to work forward from here,” Spicher said. “And make sure we can do what we can do to make sure funds continue coming into our schools.”

Spicher said that regardless of the information out there, 90% to 95% of children in the state still attend public schools.

Despite the positive conversations, Spicher noted there were still many challenges ahead because of school choice and the voucher programs — which don’t appear to be going away anytime soon, he said.

“We understand school choice. We don’t understand when you haven’t received a lot of great answers from it either,” he said. “We don’t understand that we raise the dollars, our own local funds, for our public schools, but then those dollars are permissible to be removed to follow that student in other areas.”

Board member Ken Jones questioned whether legal issues have arisen trying to challenge the vouchers because of it being a local tax.

Spicher said it felt like a poaching of dollars, as the money was going from the district to another one. He told Jones that the “legality” was the constitutional portion of how the district raised funds, and that they’ve been presented with a direction forward by officials.

“They’ll be looking to try to increase funds for private, nonpublic charter and any other schools they can to make sure there’s what they call an ‘equal playing field’ for them to have that opportunity — including the funds that would normally be raised here,” he said.