By Gongwer Staff
Posted: June 17, 2015 4:19 PM

In a late afternoon meeting Tuesday, Senators Chris Widener and Cliff Hite told lobbyists for local school groups they’ve lost touch with reality.

“We’re using the current law formula as a basis for funding kids, not theories,” said Widener.

The senators chastised the lobbyists for misrepresentation of the Senate school funding proposal.

"What do school districts and taxpayers want? They want real dollars from the state, not theoretical double speak,” said Hite.

Lobbyists for school boards, superintendents, and treasurers in Columbus say Ohio's schools will receive $830 million less in basic aid under the Senate's school funding plan than the House plan. However, this number is based on theory, not reality. The Ohio Legislative Service Commission that prepares the budget estimates for the General Assembly said in a statement, “Districts wouldn’t actually receive the $830 million under the House plan.”

While only 10% of Ohio's school districts are funded by the actual formula proposed by the House and favored by the lobbyists, the Senate's school funding formula puts over 60% of schools on a sustainable funding formula – and others, in both plans, are subject to caps and guarantees.

The lobbyists are talking about the $830 million difference, which is based on a theoretical calculation, not based on a district’s final funding amount. But the lobbyists said they are in favor of the House plan anyway to prove a theoretical point.

The fact is the Senate budget plan includes $277 million more in basic aid than in 2015 and a total of $935 million in total funding over the next 2 years. That brings the total proposed funds for K-12 schools to $8.3 billion per year in the second year of the Senate budget plan.

“It’s ironic that lobbyists who represent those local school officials, who are sworn to manage local school budgets, want to theorize and say they are for a formula that doesn’t actually send dollars to educate kids,” said Hite.

The fact is that the school lobbyists told the Senate in recent hearings that the current funding formula, which is the basis of the Senate plan was “the light at the end of the tunnel” for our public schools.

“Taxpayers want real dollars, not fiction or theory from lobbyists who work for our local schools,” said Widener.

Taking facts and figures out of context and away from the real dollars we propose to send our local schools, does our kids a disservice.

We look forward to working with our colleagues in the House and Senate in the coming weeks to achieve a fiscally sound school funding formula that puts Ohio students first and theory a distant second.