Local impacts of state education budget becoming a little clearer

The public school districts in Athens County finally have some official numbers from the state now that the budget process is over. Not surprisingly, all five county districts will face cuts over the next two years.

The first year of the budget includes the deepest round of cuts for local school districts, though four school districts see cuts the second year as well.

Athens City School District faces the most severe cuts, losing close to $2 million over the course of the two-year biennial budget that started July 1.

State aid for Athens City School District stood at $9.26 million in 2011, and it will see a cut of 13.2 percent in the first year, brining it down to $8.03 million in 2012. In the second year, the Athens district will see a further 6.9 percent cut, bringing its aid down to $7.47 million by 2013. All told, the district will lose $1,782,210. School Supt. Carl Martin said Wednesday morning that the figures matched up with what the district had been expecting.

"The numbers that were released by the state were pretty close to what we had expected," he said, declining to give further comment.

Although not as severe, every other district in the county is facing cuts as well. Alexander Local School District is seeing a 6.3 percent cut in the first year and a 2 percent cut in the second year, bringing its state aid from $9.96 million down to $9.15 million. Federal Hocking Local School District will see a 3.6 percent cut in its first year and a 0.4 percent increase its second year. Federal Hocking is the only district in Athens County to see any sort of uptick in the second year. Its state aid will go from $7.89 million to $7.63 million over the two years.

Nelsonville-York Local School District will face a 2.1 percent cut in its first year and a 0.3 percent cut its second. This will reduce state aid to that district from $8.61 million to $8.4 million. Meanwhile, Trimble Local School District will see a 6.4 percent cut its first year and a 1.8 percent cut its second year, reducing state aid from $6.7 million to $6.16 million over the course of the budget.

All told, the state budget cuts about $800 million from funding to K-12 schools in the state. Last week, Athens Supt. Martin told The Athens NEWS that the district has already reduced its budget by $450,000.

The Athens city district will undergo cuts to several aspects of its educational process this fall, Martin said in that interview, adding, "We tried to spread around the reductions."

These reductions include a 10 percent reduction in "building budgets," which account for office supplies and professional travel budgets, and places a cap on professional leave; and a 50 percent reduction in the summer workforce, which helps maintain school campuses over the summer. A curtailed field-trip budget was also developed, limiting how many field trips each school in the district may take, Martin told The NEWS in last week's interview.

Additionally, four or five teachers in the Athens City School District have retired but were not replaced, Martin said at the time.

In addition to losing federal stimulus monies from the previous two-year budget, the current one also eliminates sources of revenue for school districts such as the tangible personal property tax. Those losses were figured into the numbers that have been released.

Moreover, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, R-Westerville, rolled back the evidence-based model school-funding formula put into place by his predecessor Ted Strickland, a Democrat. That model sought to fix the school-funding formula in Ohio that was declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court four times. Kasich has said that he will introduce his own funding plan sometime next year. For now, school funding is back to the Supreme Court-declared unconstitutional formula that was in place before the evidence-based model was implemented.

State Rep. Debbie Phillips said Monday that she is deeply concerned about the cuts to education, as well as Kasich's elimination of the evidence-based model, which she said was based on research into what's the most effective way to fund education for best results for students. She pointed out that the school districts in Athens County face cuts totaling $3.59 million.

"I am very concerned about the impact on services available to our children and our children's opportunities," she said. "Gov. Kasich included at the last minute in this budget a new tax credit to provide tax cuts for people he referred to as 'big shots.' I believe that those priorities to provide tax cuts to 'big shots' while cutting education, which is vital for our children's future and our state's economic future is short-sighted."

With regard to the evidence-based model, which Phillips was involved with putting into place during Strickland's term in office, she said it was based on research on what's effective for children.

"To promptly throw that out and replace it with nothing (because of) an ideological bias, I think it's short-sighted. I think it's really damaging for our children," she said. "I remain very, very concerned about the direction this administration is going."