COVID-19 pandemic hurts public school funding
Budget cuts to public school funding at the state level have always existed, but since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, they’ve only gotten worse.
In May, Gov. Mike DeWine announced there would be a $300 million budget reduction in public school funding for grades K-12, which was heavily influenced by the decline in the economy during the shutdown due to the pandemic.
Schools all across Ohio are trying to manage how they’re able to keep their district afloat, now with new and unexpected expenses like sanitizing machines, personal protective equipment and technology for remote learning.
Streetsboro Board of Education member Kevin Grimm said these budget cuts were dramatic for their city and impact how they can operate as a district.
“We still lost about $800,000 to $900,000,” Grimm said. “And what little money we got from the federal government did not nearly even come close to making up what we lost from the state.”
Streetsboro City Schools usually gets around $5.5 million from state funding each fiscal year. Now, they’ve lost almost $1 million due to budget cuts, which Streetsboro city schools treasurer C.J. Scarcipino said has limited what the district can do financially.
“[The cuts are] definitely significant because your expenditures don’t go down, your expenditures are actually going up because you’re going to have to take extra precautions because of COVID,” Scarcipino said. “And then you have other areas that are going to suffer.”
Scarcipino said the district is only allowing essential purchases and are limiting the amount of copies teachers can make in order to cut costs.
Streetsboro city schools are fully in-person, with the exception of the Rocket Digital Academy, where students can learn online. Grimm said the board has waived all fees for families wanting to do online schooling for this school year.
Rootstown Local School District, which is in the process of moving to a fully in-person to hybrid model of schooling, typically gets around $5 million in basic state funding, according to treasurer Connie Baldwin.
“We have a considerable amount of money that we spend providing special education services,” Baldwin said. “We contract with outside agencies for occupational therapy and physical therapy and speech therapy, [there’s] just a lot of other things that we provide in addition to just the classroom setting.”
Baldwin said grants have played a large role in funding Rootstown schools for this fiscal year. Funding from state grants, as well as the CARES Act and coronavirus relief grants have helped the district manage extra expenses.
“We’ve had a lot to the point where it’s making my head spin, but it’s a good problem to have,” Baldwin said. “We have the student wellness fund that over the last two years are coming from the state. We have the ESSER [grant]… we’ve gotten $90,000 through the ESSER.”
Through the CARES Act, Rootstown and Streetsboro received more funding to help pay for extra expenses like PPE and sanitizing supplies.
State funding for public schools has been an issue of discussion for years. During the 1990s, cases like DeRolph v. State of Ohio raised the issue of districts having to rely heavily on local taxes to fund their districts rather than the state. Later, the Ohio Supreme Court found the way Ohio funds public schools was unconstitutional.
However, things may be looking differently for the way Ohio funds its public schools. House Bill 305, whose primary sponsors are Reps. Robert Cupp and John Patterson, aims to change the way state funding could work.
The bill proposes a new financial system where “It requires funding under this system to be paid directly to school districts, community schools, and STEM schools for the students they are educating.”
Baldwin said the bill is promising and is hoping the state will seriously consider passing.
“I think because of the pandemic that maybe the legislature is a little bit more willing to try to do the funding, not just based on property taxes but district wealth, as well,” Baldwin said. “And I think that’s something that because of the pandemic that they’re more willing to take a second look at.”
Rootstown’s budget is typically around $12 million a year, while Streetsboro’s budget can be anywhere from $23 to 25 million in a year. Scarcipino said the sudden cuts made it difficult for the district to adequately plan for the following fiscal year.
“I don’t know many businesses that could take the loss of a million dollars in funds overnight, especially when we’re so heavily reliant on our local tax dollars,” Scarcipino said.
The impact on school districts because of the pandemic has dramatically impacted the way schools rely on funding and raises the question if state funding in Ohio is being done right at all. Grimm hopes the state will realize the funding system is flawed and there needs to be a change.
“[Budget cuts] are kicking the school district when they’re down, when times are tougher than ever,” Grimm said. “It’s very unfair for the state to do that to any school district… we still have to maintain our level of education that we’ve had every year, our students deserve that, our families expect it.”
