Disparity in cost per pupil plus reliance on property taxes equals inequity in Ohio's formula for funding schools.

Representatives from various educational groups in Ohio have stated the problem with schools is inequity in the school funding formula with Ohio distributing more money to some schools than others.

Some of these inequities can be seen by walking into the school buildings. Other forms of inequity can be found by looking at school statistics. Trimble High School's expenditure per pupil is $4,702, according to the Ohio Department of Education Information Management Services. Cleveland Heights High School's expenditure per pupil is $8,330, according to those same statistics. This gap represents the inequity in school funding.

Rob Ostermaier/THE POST
Overcrowding and a lack of funds at Trimble Elementary sometimes leads to improvisation. Teacher Cassie Luce is forced to teach in a room not much bigger than a broom closet.

Nathan DeRolph, a senior majoring in finance at Ohio State University, has seen inequity first-hand. He and his family were chosen to represent school districts in Perry County in the fight against the inadequacy and inequity in schools within the state of Ohio in DeRolph vs. the State of Ohio in Spring 1997.

DeRolph noticed inequities within his own high school. He attended Sheridan High School in Perry County. The books that he was using in school were from the 1970s and out of date, he said. The gymnasium floor needed work too.

Out-of-date technology also was an issue.

"We had old Apple computers from the '80s-the kind you got if you saved enough Kroger receipts," he said.

DeRolph didn't know about these forms of inequity until he started visiting other schools. He saw his school and the schools around him continually struggling to pass operating levies.

"The voters never were really sympathetic," he said. "The schools were always looking for money."

When DeRolph went to college, he asked his friends to describe their high schools. He found out that some schools had rugby, lacrosse, swimming and soccer teams.

"My school had football, basketball, baseball, softball, track and wrestling," he said. "I didn't know high schools had those (other) sports."

Equity in schools cannot be achieved until a proper education is defined, DeRolph said.

"Then and only then can you figure out for these schools," he said.

The problem is the formula for computing the basic aid for a school district is the very essence of the problem, said Jim Shirey, Athens City School board member and legislative liaison, in "Off the Money," an article about school funding posted on the Internet. Basic Aid is the money the state gives each school district based on a formula computing the number of students and the cost of businesses.

"Once you understand this formula, it become very easy to distinguish between substantive discussion and hot-air rhetoric," Shirey said in reference to the proposed school funding solution.

Ohio legislators have attempted to make Ohio schools more equitable by answering an Ohio Supreme Court mandate from the DeRolph decision last spring.

Ohio's General Assembly passed House Bill 650 that addresses the DeRolph decision.

In this case, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the General Assembly to create an entirely new school financing system. In establishing such a remedy, the General Assembly would recognize only one system of public education in Ohio.

House Bill 650 is a plan to give public schools an additional $300 million beginning July 1.

HB 650 would raise the amount spent for each pupil from the current amount $3,663 to $4,063 by the year 2002, said Sen. Richard Finan, R-Cincinnati, in a news release.

HB 650 also would give property owners a 10 percent cut in property taxes, creating a possible $100 saving for those owners. This would cost the state $236 million in revenues.

Legislators also have passed House Bill 697 which will create $1.1 billion for schools each year through a 1 cent sales tax increase. Half of those proceeds would go to general school operations, facility repairs and technology. The other half would be used for property tax relief.

DeRolph doesn't think the General Assembly is doing its job.

"Politics is always going to come into play," he said. "Raising taxes is career suicide for them in an election year."

DeRolph also is upset with Gov. George Voinovich.

"He's supposed to be 'the education governor'," DeRolph said. "He says a lot for politics."

Barbara Sprague, executive director of the Ohio PTA said the formula developed by legislators is highly inequitable.

"It doesn't meet the mandate of the DeRolph decision," she said.

William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, doesn't think the plans will work.

"House Bill 697 constitutes a totally inadequate response to the Supreme Court's order for a complete systematic overhaul of financing public education in Ohio," Phillis said. "It negatively impacts on the poor and tends to favor middle and high income individuals. It blames public education for a tax increase of which education receives only one-half and is predestined to become Lottery II."

Phillis thinks people will think HB 697 as "the mother of all cure-alls."

"At best, House Bill 697 is another Band-Aid," he said. "Very simply, it represents a political solution to a problem that requires an educational one. The state has not perfected 'a complete systematic overhaul' as ordered by the court."