Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman. (Photo by Morgan Trau, WEWS.)
by Marilou Johanek – Ohio Capital Journal
Just as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was never really about improving government efficiency – quite the opposite, in fact – the 5,000-plus page biennial budget rewrite the Ohio House slapped together and sent to the Ohio Senate was never really about improving the common good of everyday Ohioans.
It was about advancing the hard-right priorities of powerful politicians who answer to big money – not constituents in gerrymandered voting districts.
Yet even for the supremely arrogant kingpin of state government, Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, the budget bill passed out of the General Assembly’s lower chamber on April 9 was beyond the pale in cruelty and cunning.
It is the Ohio version of Project 2025 with all the unsparing, exacting hallmarks of the Trumpian blueprint, recklessly destroying federal institutions and agencies that, however imperfectly, protect, serve and promote the welfare of we, the people.
But that’s the MAGA nihilistic way and Ohio Republicans are doing their part in tearing down what made Ohio great. Huffman, the Lima Republican who runs the state under the one party rule he rigged with unconstitutional redistricting, is in the catbird seat calling the shots. The speaker (and former Ohio Senate president) lords over the GOP supermajority in the Ohio House while his political protégé, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, accommodates the boss.
Huffman, who once said the quiet part out loud about GOP gerrymandering (“We can kind of do what we want”), now has a straight runway to enact his blueprint on Ohioans whether they like it or not. I suspect his budget proposal will survive, largely intact, with the House caucus he controls and the one he led with an iron fist for four years in the Senate.
Local public schools, public libraries, clean drinking initiatives, lead poisoning prevention, pediatric cancer funding, home visits for new mothers, food assistance programs and health care coverage for the poor are all on the chopping block in Huffman’s House Bill 96.
What wasn’t on his slash-and-burn budget list were government handouts (taxpayer-funded vouchers) to upper-income private school families. But doling out unlimited government subsidies to the affluent, whose darlings are already attending and affording elite high schools and religious institutions, is Huffman’s thing.
He is on a crusade to shower hundreds of millions of public education dollars on unaccountable private and predominantly religious schools – despite clear prohibitions against such a diversion of public money in the Ohio Constitution.
“No religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state,” the state constitution reads.
But Huffman has defied the state constitution before with impunity (on gerrymandering) and did so again by ramrodding his universal voucher bonanza through the legislature for everyone, regardless of income. Never mind that the giant state giveaway – to offset private school costs for the well-off – blew a $1 billion dollar hole in the general revenue budget its first year.
Never mind that public schools in the state, forever cash-strapped and dependent on tapped out property owners, labored under an unequal, inadequate school funding formula (ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court) for 26 years before a bipartisan coalition agreed to a phased-in funding solution over six years. The final two-year phase was expected to be fully funded in the current biennial budget negotiations.
Not under Huffman. Not in a state where the Republican lock on power is absolute and the Statehouse heavyweight has free, unchecked rein to flout the law and grossly defund the public schools that educate the vast majority of Ohio students (approximately 1.6 million) while greatly expanding appropriations for private school tuitions, homeschooling expenses and even unchartered, nonpublic schools with deeply held religious beliefs that are virtually unregulated by the state!
Funding for the “thorough and efficient system of common schools” state government is constitutionally obligated to secure – and that would have been secured under the Fair School Funding Plan from 2021 – shrank by over $400 million. House Republicans added insult to injury by robbing fiscally prudent school districts of surplus revenue for future planning to give uneven, one-time property tax relief in some districts and not others. They also ensured that property tax owners will face more school levies from local districts forced to deplete that surplus operating revenue. Sound policymaking (or genuine property tax relief) this is not.
But it is a gut punch to public schools, just as a $100 million reduction in funding to Ohio’s public libraries is, or cutting over $22 million from the Help Me Grow program is for in-home visits to newborn babies to mitigate the state’s infant mortality problem. But Matt Huffman’s Ohio-centric Project 2025 is also a kick in the teeth to democratic self-governance.
Last budget go-around Republican lawmakers stripped the Ohio Board of Education of most of its power and gave it to the governor. This two-year budget proposes cutting all 11 elected members of the board and shrinking the gubernatorial appointments from nine to five. This is Matt Huffman removing voters entirely from state education policy as he engineers total opaque privatization of Ohio schools.
How is silencing the electorate improving the common good?
Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.
Loveland, Ohio – The state budget that will determine spending for the next two years is making its way through the Ohio General Assembly. Governor Mike DeWine’s budget proposal would cut funding for Loveland schools and many other public school districts.
If DeWine’s budget is approved, the Loveland City School District’s five-year forecast predicts that our district would receive $2.5 million less in state funding.
In response to the community asking district leadership to find solutions to these funding challenges, they have launched a page on their website at lovelandschools.org/lobby. There, you will find three requests to make to state lawmakers:
Protect the “Guarantee”
Fully Implement the Fair School Funding Plan
Increase the State Share Minimum to 20%
The district says that if these requests are implemented at the statehouse, it would prevent funding cuts for the Loveland City School District and build a foundation for a better funding system for the future.
The district is asking our community to share these requests with state lawmakers. On this page, you will find contact information for Ohio lawmakers including the Governor, so you can email, call, or send letters.
The town hall meeting is on Wednesday, April 16, at 6 PM at the Loveland Middle School, where you will receive more information about the funding request and updates on the state budget process.
The Cupp-Patterson plan was originally offered as a bill in the Ohio Legislature, but instead was written into the state budget with a six-year implementation schedule. Full funding of $2 million, and full implementation, must be part of each state budgeting process. (Adobe Stock)
At the Ohio Statehouse, proposed budget cuts to the Fair School Funding Plan have sparked debate among lawmakers and educators.
Also known as the Cupp-Patterson plan, it is in its fourth year of a six-year implementation, designed to address disparities in school funding across the state. Backers are urging the full completion of its phase-in.
Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, Speaker of the House, has suggested in recent weeks reducing the state’s public education budget by at least $650 million, challenging the state’s ability to continue the current funding model.
“Implementing of the Cupp-Patterson Plan that many believe is a fait accompli that we decided four years ago — that in this budget we’re going to do that — in my estimation, is a fantasy,” Huffman stated.
Critics of the proposed cuts argued reducing funding could exacerbate inequities, particularly in under-resourced districts. Huffman contended offering scholarships toward Ed-Choice vouchers for private schooling offers families more educational choices and can lead to taxpayer savings.
Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, pointed out the potential effect on public schools, which he said serve 95% of Ohio students.
“The governor has proposed a budget that would cut public schools by over $100 million, while at the same time increasing funding for vouchers for private schools and charter schools by $500 million,” DiMauro stressed. “We know that is just absolutely unfair.”
DiMauro worries such major shifts in funding could lead to larger class sizes and reduced services in public schools, placing additional burdens on local taxpayers to fill the gaps.
He emphasized now is the time for Ohioans who are concerned about the issue and how it might affect their communities to contact their representatives in Columbus.
Our goal this week is to send 1000 letters to the statehouse by March 21, 2025. Help make this happen!
Our family moved here a decade ago after the military, and what a well-loved decade it has been. When we packed and moved like the nomads we had been previously, we never expected to find such a great community. It has been everything from a patient phone call from a teacher, a basket of laundry when the dryer broke (3 times in the last decade), and a dish of food when a loved one passed away. Loveland is a small town with a big heart.
Our schools are a vital component of our community, and our students thrive thanks to the dedication of our educators. We rank in the top 3% of districts in the state, with 97% of districts having more teacher support per student. Our teachers and staff are dedicated, as are our wonderful students. We personally, have four children and three of them in Loveland schools. It has been amazing to watch how they thrive and grow as people.
The current budget proposal from Governor DeWine leads to lost funds for Loveland schools which will undoubtedly lead to additional revenue requests from the school district. Let’s continue to build the unity we have as community members to support the students who are the heart of our vibrant community.
While we can and should discuss levies, we currently face a more significant financial crisis affecting our community.
In 2021, Governor DeWine enacted the Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), which aimed to implement three phases to support public school funding in Ohio, where over 90% of children attend public schools.
The new budget proposal will not fully fund the Loveland City School District, and our Governor and legislators need to understand that Loveland is one of many school districts affected by this situation. Currently, the proposed bill does not adhere to the guarantee established previously.
Not only is the Governor failing to fulfill his promise, but we will also face a reduction of $2.5 million over the next five years.
Your Job Community:
We can unite on this issue. If the state cuts funding (and as a state we are 45th out of 50 states in per pupil funding), the foundation of our community: our schools will suffer. It is time for our legislators to hear from all of us. We need Governor DeWine to endorse a bill that benefits our schools. We need to come together. Write letters, call legislators, and call the Governor.
Here are some suggestions for what to include in your phone calls, emails, and letters to state lawmakers:
Your name
Your role (parent, student, staff member, community member) in the Loveland City School District.
Your story (explain why you support Loveland City Schools, your family’s experience with Loveland City Schools, and why you are concerned about funding cuts for our district. Make it clear that decisions about funding impact children and communities.)
Your request (for example: protect the “guarantee” because reducing it would hurt funding for our district, fully implement the Fair School Funding Plan with updated inputs, and increase the state share minimum to 20%)
Your appreciation (thank them for their work in Columbus and their attention to this issue that is important to you and our community.)
We suggest you write an email message to lawmaker, then use that message as a script for a phone call. The message can then be printed and mailed to lawmakers for an additional contact point.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://lovelandmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Loveland-State-Legislators-136th-General-Assembly-2025.pdf” title=”Loveland State Legislators – 136th General Assembly 2025″]
Local public school leaders from all around the state filled the Ohio House Education Committee’s hearing room on Tuesday to explain to lawmakers how full state funding is critical to their districts.
Christopher Edison, superintendent of Pymatuning Valley Local School District, described the pride in the district’s diversity and resilience. At the Northeast Ohio district, 76% of the students are considered economically disadvantaged and there’s been an increase in the need for specialized services. Edison also highlighted the successes in academic achievement, career and workforce readiness, and mental health supports at the district.
“However, the sustainability of these programs is increasingly at risk due to rising operational costs,” Edison told the committee in Tuesday testimony. “Inflation has significantly increased expenses for essential resources such as transportation, instructional materials, and staffing.”
Without an increase in base funding, Pymatuning’s ability to “maintain and expand these successful initiatives is severely threatened,” Edison said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Hits have already come to districts because of inflation and increasing costs not reflected in the funding model that looks to see its final funding phase-in this year, if the legislature includes it in the operating budget set to be passed by July 1.
Montgomery County’s Northmont City Schools — a district with rural, suburban, and urban areas — has seen state funding cuts and defeats of school levies that resulted in the need to cut more than 40 district positions in May 2023, and the closure of one of their elementary schools, according to Superintendent Tony Thomas.
“I understand that members of the General Assembly passed a budget two years ago that increased funding across the state, and we are thankful,” Thomas told the education committee. “But unfortunately for Northmont, those dollars are not reaching our school buildings and we are doing more with less.”
It’s stories like these that the Fair School Funding Plan workgroup, which was created along with the state’s public school funding model, is hoping will flood both the education and finance committees, along with the offices of state legislators, to inform them about the importance of proper public school funding in Ohio.
“It’s our responsibility to ensure that every member of the Ohio legislature and the General Assembly be made fully aware of these facts, their implications, and the legislative decisions that led to these circumstances as they contemplate this important budget,” said Mike Hanlon, Jr., superintendent of Chardon Local Schools, and Fair School Funding Plan workgroup member.
The workgroup met recently, along with more than 600 other education community members, to discuss upcoming legislative meetings about the budget, what the governor’s proposal would mean for districts, and how to engage with lawmakers.
“In my visits to Columbus … one message was very clear with the legislators that we met with: ‘We need to hear from constituents on the issue of school funding,’” Hanlon said.
Members of the workgroup said they’ve heard another message from the lawmakers: resources are limited in the budget.
In the governor’s executive proposal, the Fair School Funding Plan’s final phase-in was included, but inputs that would account for inflation costs at districts were not, something the governor’s office has “remained silent” on in all budgets that included the public school funding plan, workgroup members said.
“First and foremost, this is not our ideal proposal from the governor,” said Jared Bunting, CFO and treasurer of the Athens City School District. “However, this is in line with what the governor has done in the past and we’re thankful that the governor has included the Fair School Funding Plan in his budget, even though it falls woefully short of our expectations.”
In the governor’s budget for the next two years, the budget would decrease funding for traditional public schools by 0.9%, according to a workgroup analysis. Community and STEM schools will receive an 11.3% increase in the governor’s proposal, while joint vocational school districts receive a 14.1% increase. Voucher programs including the EdChoice private school program would see a 15.8% increase.
“So 90% of the students in the state are seeing a reduction in funding,” Bunting said, referring to the enrollment numbers in the state, which show the vast majority of students attend traditional public schools.
Alternately, last year, the state funded private school voucher scholarships with nearly $1 billion in one year, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
Source: Ohio Fair School Funding Plan Workgroup
School administrators on the workgroup noted that the funding simulations used in the governor’s budget proposal show an intention to “continue to update capacity each year without any input updates.”
Without inputs to account for rising costs and inflation, the state not only won’t meet the workgroup’s ideal of a 50% state share of education costs, but will drop below the share of funding before 1995, when the Ohio Supreme Court first ruled in DeRolph v. State of Ohio that the state’s education funding violated the state constitution, falling short of the “thorough and efficient” system of schools directed in the founding document.
With talk of addressing property taxes in Ohio, something that school funding has relied on for decades, workgroup members said updating cost inputs could help with that issue as well.
“When we talk about property tax relief, we would like to argue that … updating all inputs consistently is a form of property tax relief to our community members,” said Jenni Logan, treasurer for the Sycamore Community Schools.
Now, as the budget process continues, educators, and administrators not only plan to push for proper education supports in committees considering the budget document, but also want to get district stories to all legislators, including newly elected GA members, who haven’t had a front-row seat to the public school funding model fight.
Those who are new to school funding are also faced with “competing interests in other areas that are not related to school funding,” according to Hanlon. He said legislators who talked to him said they “haven’t heard from anyone” on school funding.
“As a result, it’s very likely that they need to hear from us, and from someone that they trust and are confident in, that will provide them with the necessary facts to shape their understanding of school funding,” Hanlon said.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
________________
Susan Tebben
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Stephen Dackin speaks to the Ohio House Finance Committee on a new education operating budget. Photo courtesy of Ideastream/The Ohio Channel
Hearings have begun in the Ohio House Finance Committee to dissect Gov. Mike DeWine’s executive budget proposal, including a lengthy discussion on Thursday with regard to the education provisions included in it.
“This budget takes the next steps toward fulfilling our key policy priorities,” said Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Stephen Dackin.
DeWine’s proposal recommends $12.4 billion in funding to state schools in fiscal year 2026, and another $12.6 billion in 2027. That recommendation includes the final two years of a public school full fair funding formula that has been a point of contention for legislative leaders, particularly House Speaker Matt Huffman, who has called the funding model “unsustainable.”
The governor’s proposal also gives community schools an increase in per-pupil funding and “continues access to Ohio’s five scholarship programs,” including the state’s private school voucher program.
Many members of the House Finance Committee asked about the foundational funding for state school districts, for which the executive budget recommends a state share of 35%, with no adjustment for inflation to the “inputs” of the education costs in the formula.
Some Republicans on the committee questioned the continued use of the Cupp-Patterson funding formula (also called the Fair School Funding Plan), along with the burden of property taxes in their districts used to pay for schools.
“The school funding formula is inadequate and it’s inequitable,” claimed state Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp. “We do not award the merit of outcomes in the funding formula.”
While Dackin said he is “a fan of performance-based funding,” he reemphasized comments DeWine made about the overall budget when he introduced it: that the document was a starting point from which to build the final budget, with room for adjustments.
Dackin also pushed back on concerns from Democratic members about a lack of oversight for private schools receiving significant state monies compared with the oversight public schools receive.
“The concern for a lot of people is, what are we getting for those dollars, because we have very little oversight in how that money is being used at these schools,” said House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington.
Dackin said there is “some measure” for schools accepting scholarship money, but he has a higher measure that he takes into account.
“Every day, parents make a decision where to send their kids, and parents make decisions based on a variety of issues,” Dackin told the committee. “The ultimate accountability is where the parents send their kids.”
Literacy
Literacy is a main tenet of the governor’s education proposal, with objectives that included continuing the ReadOhio program and implementation of an Ohio Literacy Coaching Model by the Department of Education and Workforce, and further training on the Science of Reading model.
“The department supports the use of high-quality core and intervention instructional materials, provides educator professional development and supports literary coaches who provide targeted support to schools and districts,” the budget document states.
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The executive budget notes nearly 72,000 teachers and administrators have completed one of six “Science of Reading Professional Development pathways” as of Jan. 15 of this year, and 84 “literary coaches” were used during the 2024-2025 school year in 93 school districts in Ohio.
Dackin told the finance committee reading is a “lynchpin skill” that is vital to successful outcomes for Ohio’s students.
“I feel like that is our moral obligation as adults, to make sure that (bad outcomes don’t) happen in Ohio,” Dackin said. “I see no reason why Ohio can’t lead the country in literacy rates, zero.”
The science of reading is also a priority in executive budget proposals for the Ohio Department of Children and Youth. DeWine noted a goal to improve state kindergarten readiness through a 40% increase in the number of children in licensed early care and education settings “with a curriculum aligned to the science of reading and early learning and development standards,” according to the budget document.
A spokesperson for the governor did not elaborate on what would be expanded about the program, but a representative of the Department of Children and Youth said the program currently uses monthly payments directly to approved licensed child care providers. Families apply for the voucher through their local county Job and Family Services Department, and eligibility for the program is determined by income, family size, and job or education status.
Families with children enrolled in licensed child care programs and monthly incomes between 146% and 200% of the federal poverty level are eligible for the voucher program, according to Kari Akins, of the children and youth department. For a family of four, that’s between $45,552 and $62,400 a year.
Federal education uncertainty
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
Legislators brought up a possible federal issue during the discussions of the executive budget: whether the U.S. Department of Education will be able to provide the usual funding, or whether the department will even exist in the near future, based on President Donald Trump’s potential executive order and comments that he plans to dismantle the department.
“We hear occasionally, from time to time in the news that there might be consideration in Washington, D.C., to change the (U.S.) Department of Education,” said state Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond. “I’m curious as to whether you’ve heard whether any changes to the U.S. Department of Education might come with changes to funding for Ohio schools.”
Dackin had a simple answer to the committee.
“We don’t know, to be honest,” Dackin said. “We’ve received no guidance at this point, no direction from the US DOE on anything related to funding.”
Prior to the budget discussion, Dackin joined education administrators from 10 other states in a Jan. 28 letter to “Administrator McMahon,” seemingly the currently-unconfirmed Trump nominee for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, asking the new administration to “prioritize … policies that trust and empower state educational agencies to shape education systems that meet the unique needs of their students.”
Those priorities include state control of education funds and “guidance aligned with congressional intent that defers to state law and policy,” according to the letter, provided by the the Department of Education and Workforce.
“We know that the department must work with Congress to achieve many of these changes to (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) but, in the meantime, please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible in your actions,” stated the letter, signed by Dackin and administrators from North Dakota, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Florida, Utah, Mississippi, Indiana, Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina.
The executive budget will continue through hearings in education and finance committees within the Ohio House before a legislative budget document is created, and the Ohio Senate begins its own consideration. A final budget is due by July.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
_________________
Susan Tebben
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump directs an emphasis on school choice and private school voucher programs when it comes to education funding, something that’s been happening in Ohio for several decades now.
While it’s unclear how much power the executive order will have with spending decisions decided by Congress, the executive order directs to the U.S. Department of Education to prioritize “school choice” programs in grant funding, and requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to guide states on block grants that can be used for private schools.
The executive order also directs the U.S. Department of Education to release guidance on using federal funding formulas for private school scholarship programs, and for military families in particular to be given information on scholarships.
It’s not yet clear how this will affect individual states, but Ohio has already vastly expanded its private school voucher programs over the last two decades, and recently passed near-universal levels eligibility.
Huffman called the future of the current funding model – also called the Fair School Funding Plan or the Cupp-Patterson plan – a “fantasy,” but has seemingly softened his stance for now after hearing from members of his own party.
A spokesperson for Huffman and the House Majority Caucus did not respond to a request for comment on the executive order.
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The president and CEO of EdChoice, Ohio’s private voucher program, praised the order in a statement, saying prioritizing and expanding such programs “is a crucial step toward empowering families and giving them greater control over their children’s education.”
“This initiative reflects a commitment to funding students not systems and to ensuring the proper role of the federal government in education,” EdChoice President and CEO Robert Enlow said in the Wednesday statement. “It recognizes both the appropriate role of the federal government on education and the fact that education is primarily a state function.”
Public school advocates feel the same way about a federal push for private school funding expansion as they do about state-level funding increases, for which a lawsuit was filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court to eliminate the private school voucher program.
The lawsuit argues that funding for private schools is coming out of the coffers of the public school system, something the state is constitutionally obligated to fund properly.
“Diverting public money to unaccountable and ineffective private schools is a failed strategy that runs counter to public opinion,” Ohio Federation of Teachers head Melissa Cropper told the Capital Journal.
A 2024 survey done by All4Ed, Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group, found a majority of American voters support public education, and an increase in funding to improve public schools. This included 58% of Republicans surveyed. Only 34% of GOP voters polled said funding for voucher programs should be increased.
“Voters view public schools, including their local public school, more favorably than charter, private or religious schools,” the study stated.
Cropper called the move by the Trump administration “a strategy straight of Project 2025,” the playbook written and supported by right-wing Heritage Foundation members, some of whom have become players in the Trump administration, including the White House budget office.
“Regardless of what politicians do, Ohio educators and school staff will continue fighting for the resources that our students deserve,” Cropper said.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
_______________
Susan Tebben
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine gets off a school bus as part of the first Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group meeting at the Ohio Department of Public Safety Atrium on Sept. 11, 2023. (Photo by Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal).
It didn’t take long. The new legislative session began in Columbus with Republican chieftains in the state throwing the future of public education in Ohio under the school bus.
First it was the billion-dollar voucher king, Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, to hedge his bets on giving Ohio’s 611 school districts what they need to provide a quality education to the 1.7 million students they serve.
Then it was Huffman’s patsy in the executive branch, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who added his two cents worth of wishy-washy about how a leaner state budget ahead means something’s gotta give — like fully funding the education system used by the vast majority of Ohio families and their children. “Sometimes these are very, very difficult, difficult choices,” said the gutless wonder. What leadership.
Educating future generations of Ohioans with high-quality public schools is your job, governor. It’s the No. 1 responsibility of the state to ensure a thorough and efficient system of funding for public schools. ‘Says so right in the Ohio Constitution. It also says, “no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, control of, any part of the school funds of this state.” But DeWine and his puppet master in the Ohio House ignored that part years ago when the state began diverting hundreds of millions of education funds to private and mostly religious schools.
Clearly, the politicians calling the shots in state government have no regard for the state constitution. Adhering to the rule of law is optional when political power is absolute. Huffman, who thumbed his nose at the Ohio Constitution on fair redistricting (to pull off even more egregious gerrymandering in legislative and congressional districts) is doing the same thing on adequately funding public education.
He’s looking to cut revenue to public schools while spending a ton of tax dollars on private school vouchers — with aspirations to fund more private school facilities to increase demand for those vouchers. Call it the Great GOP Phase-out of Public Education. Last week, Huffman dropped a calculated bombshell to prepare Ohio’s public-school districts for another financial hit from the state.
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The Lima Republican said the state couldn’t afford to fully fund public schools or finally fix a school funding formula ruled unconstitutional nearly three decades ago. The Ohio Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling said the state’s failure to provide and distribute sufficient resources for public education and its over-reliance on local property taxes to cover that shortcoming violated the law.
Yet Ohio lawmakers never remedied the problem. School districts had to keep going back to voters just to maintain and operate local schools. Homeowners carried the weight of school funding, not the state. They were/are understandably tapped out on school levies, especially as changes in property evaluations jack up tax bills.
But in 2021, after years of collaboration between former Republican Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp, former Democratic state Rep. John Patterson and scores of public education stakeholders, Ohio came close to meeting its constitutional obligation of ensuring a thorough and efficient system of funding for public schools. “What we really wanted to do was figure out what it really costs to educate a student and then what a district can really do to support its fair share, and then the state would compensate with the rest,” said Patterson.
The Cupp-Patterson spending formula, known as the Fair School Funding Plan, was enacted as part of the 2021-23 state budget. The new system weighed a district’s expenses to come up with the base per-pupil funding amount — instead of a blanket amount of state funding for all schools — and changed the way the local community’s share was measured depending on property tax value and the income of local residents.
That was a big deal and a significant step forward to address the long-running inequities of an unconstitutional school funding system that had failed generations of K-12 students. The quality of their education often depended on where they lived. Wealthy school districts in Ohio had every advantage over high poverty districts that struggled to pay for even basics in the classroom.
The Fair School Funding Plan initiated a level of fairness and reliability in state support that past spending programs lacked. Complete state funding of the FSFP (around $2 billion altogether) was to be phased in over a six-year period through two-year budget cycles. The goal was to continue expanding state funding for districts in successive biennial state budgets until the Fair School Funding Plan was fully funded.
The last installation, or third phase, was to be paid in full in the upcoming 2026-2027 operating budget. But that expectation hit a wall when Huffman nixed increased spending to public schools as “unsustainable.”
His excuses for not making good on fully funding Cupp-Patterson — less state revenue to work with, less federal pandemic relief money, more scrutiny needed for school money already allocate — don’t apply to his expansive voucher outlays to religious schools that reached $966.2 million for the 2023-2024 school year. Enough to fully fund Fair School Funding Plan.
But Huffman is laying the ground to shave more off the FSFP and showing his utter indifference to the acute financial challenges facing countless districts. Tough luck for the nearly 90% of Ohio students who attend public schools with slashed opportunities. It didn’t take long.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
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Marilou Johanek
Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.
As Ohio’s 136th General Assembly begins, the newly minted House Speaker has already taken a stand on education, saying spending for the state’s public school funding model is “unsustainable.”
Priorities (and for that matter, legislative committees) have yet to be formally established, but comments by Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, have already brought criticism from public school advocates across the state.
Speaking to reporters after the first official meeting of the Ohio House under his leadership, Huffman was asked about the Cupp-Patterson public school funding plan, also called the Fair School Funding Plan by supporters.
The funding model for state support of public schools has been through most of its six-year phase-in, seeing funding through the last two budget cycles. This year was set to be the last phase-in for the funding, but Huffman said there is no such thing as a “three-generation roll-out” and pointed to his comments when Cupp-Patterson was first considered by the legislature. Back then, he did not support funding the full measure all at once, because he said it would tie down future state legislatures with a funding method they may or may not be able to afford.
“I don’t think there is a third phase to Cupp-Patterson,” Huffman said this week. “I guess the clearest statement I can say is that I think those increases in spending are unsustainable.”
The new speaker went on to say the state needs to look at “whether these dollars are being spent wisely in some districts, we know they are in many.”
Public school advocates have fought for the funding model, a model that focuses on real-time costs from district to district, rather than a blanket amount of state funding for all schools. While the comments from Huffman were criticized by advocates, they didn’t necessarily come as a surprise.
“It’s certainly disappointing, but it doesn’t change anything for us,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association. “Implementing the Fair School Funding Plan is still our top priority.”
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Without the funding, public schools will have to reach further into the pockets of taxpayers with levy-increase requests, something that shouldn’t have to happen under a system that constitutionally supports public schools.
” If the speaker thinks there isn’t enough education funding to go around, Ohio law is very clear,” Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, told the Capital Journal. “The legislature must fund public schools and make cuts to the costly and ineffective universal private school vouchers that were put in place by Speaker Huffman (as an Ohio senator) and other legislators,” said Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
Those who support the funding model pointed to the $1 billion that went to scholarship funds including the EdChoice private school voucher program in 2023, which the legislature approved to give Ohio students near-universal eligibility to move to private schools of their choosing if they live in public school districts considered under-performing.
“If the speaker wants to talk about sustainability, you have to start with those numbers,” DiMauro said.
Late last year, the legislature also removed provisions of a bill that would have added accountability measures to the private school voucher program, despite education advocates asking that accountability measures for private schools match those of public schools.
Eric Brown, former Ohio Supreme Court chief justice and chair of the steering committee for Vouchers Hurt Ohio, said the group “never trusted that state lawmakers would fully fund public schools.”
“Instead they are intent on giving refunds and rebates to wealthy families to pay for private schools and forcing homeowners and taxpayers to pay more for their local public schools,” Brown said in a statement. “We believe this system is unsustainable and unconstitutional.”
DiMauro acknowledged that the Fair School Funding Plan will require inputting the real costs on an ongoing basis to account for inflation, and having the funding method keep up with those costs, but to do so would only be keeping up with what the constitution asks of state leaders, he said.
“It means finally having a system that will meet the requirements of the constitution and serve the needs of the nearly 90% of students who are in our public schools,” DiMauro said.
Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for charter school advocates The Fordham Institute, said the cost of the Cupp-Patterson plan is “something that the legislature is just going to have to grapple with over the longterm.”
Charter schools in Ohio have “long been underfunded,” Churchill said, and the fact that public school enrollment has seen a decline in recent years shows that public schools “should have less need for funding” but also more focus on putting the funding “where the needs are the greatest.”
“Our school funding should be driven by enrollment and head counts,” Churchill said. “There’s a lot of money going to our public schools, so the dollars are going even further than they would if our state had a growing student population.”
The enrollment in public schools has gone down slightly over the past few years, though some experts attribute that to a national decline in birth rates more than participation choices. The National Center for Education Statistics sets projections for enrollment, and estimates Ohio’s public school student enrollment will go down by 7.6% by 2031, a loss of more than 127,000 students.
The most recent data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce showed more than 1.75 million students in public schools, versus 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.
The public school numbers showed a loss of 5,400 students compared to numbers reported by the ODEW in fiscal year 2023. That’s down from 2022 as well, but public schools saw an increase of nearly 18,000 students between 2021 and 2022, according to state data.
Non-public schools have seen gradual increases since fiscal year 2021, when enrollment was reported at 162,917.
Still, in the 2022-2023 school year, the ODEW reported 88% of schools in Ohio were traditional public schools, followed by community schools at 9.4% and vocational schools at 2.1%.
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Susan Tebben
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Christina Collins’ journey to become an educator started when she helped her grandfather read his mail.
He had dropped out in middle school, and had trouble with reading and understanding words, even ones specifically written for him.
Collins’ dad and brother both struggled in school as well, and it was through their struggles that she saw “how hard it was for some people to be successful.”
“So, those moments all kind of led to, for me, believing that literacy is a key civil rights issue,” Collins told the Capital Journal. “I mean, the ability to participate in the world around you is to be a literate human being.”
The Gahanna native became a high school English teacher, and cherished the interactions she’d have with students, the kids who seemed to be doing fine and the kids who struggled or made trouble.
“I was always very driven about recognizing every student, and getting other people to recognize every student to help support every student,” Collins said.
To this day, she gets messages from students who have moved on to become educators themselves.
That new generation of teachers is facing a whole host of new challenges, from culture war battles to ever-changing education standards, and Collins sees the developments in education statewide and nationally as a departure from the true aims of the field.
“Our pendulum has swung way too far over to seeing kids as test scores,” she said. “We should be finding every kid’s talents and getting them going in the right direction.”
Joining the board
While Collins was an educator, she taught her classes, kept up with the curriculum and all the other everyday roles of a high school teacher.
But she realized that, for other teachers, those roles didn’t include staying up all night reading legislation.
“I thought that was just a thing all teachers did,” she said. “I thought ‘well this is part of education, everybody’s reading legislation.’”
When her colleagues dispelled that belief, she realized perhaps her next move might be toward honing the policy that came from the statehouse into local school districts.
She became an administrator with the purpose of “being a filter for the noise” coming out of Columbus via policy mandates and standard changes, from Race to the Top and performance evaluations to the third-grade reading guarantee.
“There was a time when I was in a district as curriculum director where in five years there were four different sets of graduation requirements,” Collins said.
Feeling the impact of constant and rapid changes coming from legislative bodies who included many non-educators compelled Collins to run for a spot on the Ohio State Board of Education. She took her spot on the board right as one of the biggest level-sets ever to happen to Ohio education unfolded: the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic brought school closures, virtual learning, a scramble to decide whether testing made sense among uncertain learning environments, and a reckoning when it came to what kids really needed from their educational facilities.
Amid the stress of teachers learning new roles, and parents learning what it takes to be a teacher, Collins saw the era as a point of hope, as a needed reflection period for policymakers and districts alike.
“I saw it as a key moment where we could just blank-slate reset and think differently about our education system,” she said.
Surely, she thought, the adaptation that students had gone through in their methods of socialization and learning will lead to changes in the way education is conducted. Surely things like student hunger and poverty that were so starkly spotlighted amid a global pandemic would stay at the forefront of the minds of leadership as they move forward.
“My experience on the board, especially that first year, I was like ‘can we think differently, can we think about competency-based learning models, how can we meet their needs?’”
As a member of the board, she was part of many discussions when it came to coming out of the pandemic and the needs of the education system. But those discussions didn’t go the way she’d hoped.
“It was like the rush to return to normal was the sole focus, and that was coming straight from the statehouse,” she said.
She wasn’t naive to the fact that the state Board of Education, whose candidates appear on nonpartisan ballots, had its conservative and liberal members. But discussions during the pandemic were markedly bipartisan, with some “more known conservative members” hearing the ideas of education reform related to pandemic-era impacts and thinking “maybe we should think differently,” according to Collins.
“Coming out of the pandemic, this culture of kids has changed, and I don’t think that we’re focused on the right things to meet their needs,” she said.
The tune coming to Collins and the rest of the board was the return of state testing and the return of “normal” in-person instruction, despite a years-long pivot to learning alternatives.
“At no point did (the state) slow down and address how we’re throwing (the students) all back together,” Collins said.
The legislature paused testing amid the pandemic, and policymakers sought to allow schools to move forward without reflection on the tests that were conducted, some through federal mandate, at least for a while. But as 2022 rolled around, the restart of testing became a discussion at the legislative level again, a decision Collins thinks should have been put on the back-burner a little longer.
“That was a moment where we should have delayed, there should have been a bit longer before that happened again,” she said.
Culture wars over change
When the pandemic seemed to be in the rearview mirror, the board’s work didn’t slow down, instead shifting to an area Collins wasn’t quite expecting: culture wars.
She hadn’t been fully caught off-guard when anti-racism resolutions brought white-hot debate to the board’s door, or when proposed Title IX language changes brought along talk of transgender rights in schools. Her seat on the board was barely warm when she started receiving emails accusing her of being anti-American and even socialist, all based purely on the fact that she was an educator, she said.
“I think I’m still a little shocked that in Ohio we’re at a point where we’ve had those kinds of culture war issues,” Collins said. “I don’t believe the majority of Ohioans want those issues to be at the forefront.”
COLUMBUS, OH — MARCH 05: Christina Collins, former State Board of Education member and currently the head of Honesty for Ohio Education a pro-public schools organization that testifies in favor of fair school funding, March 5, 2024, outside the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
Having those issues, which Collins acknowledged weren’t necessarily within the board’s purview, become months-long debates with resolution approval, then reversal, meant other things that the board could have been doing within the education space weren’t seeing the light of day.
“All of that was happening at the same time, which I think is how we lost that potential for change,” she said.
A bigger change was headed for the board, that would remove many of its responsibilities, and cause a shift that would eventually convince Collins to move on.
A bill had been floating in the Ohio legislature for more than a year. The more than 2,000-page policy would not only change the name of the Ohio Department of Education to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, but it would restructure the department to have two leaders under the umbrella of the governor’s cabinet, one for education and another for workforce.
The ODEW would still include the State Board of Education, but board members would be mainly focused on teacher licensure, educator disciplinary actions and district territory disputes.
State Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, an ex-officio member of the board of education, was not the main sponsor of the bill, but pushed hard for it as chairman of the Ohio Senate Education Committee.
Arguments were made that the board was ineffectual and inefficient. Collins sees no reason to place blame for the way the board has worked, but from her perspective, the board filters legislative measures to the local districts as another cog in a wheel that needs improvement.
“The board’s seeming inability to get things done – which I don’t believe, but the rhetoric around it – I think that’s a reflection of what our local districts are dealing with because they are struggling to implement all of the things,” Collins said.
During committee hearings on the bill, members of the state board, including Collins, submitted testimony against the changes, saying putting the leaders under the governor’s cabinet would decrease the level of accountability they could have to districts and voters.
Collins brought up the many mandates under which the board had guided local districts, and the source of any and all of those mandates.
“These were all legislated efforts, but you’re still saying our schools are failing,” she wrote in her testimony. “I ask, who holds this (General) Assembly accountable when the unending educational initiatives it doles out do not work?”
The overhaul of the ODE did not play out in the first General Assembly in which it was introduced, but shortly after a new General Assembly came to work, the push for Senate Bill 1 and the changes to the department were introduced again.
Teachers unions, board of education members and advocacy groups alike all came out in opposition to the bill, representing hours of testimony in committee. Supporters of the bill included the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
The bill passed the Senate last March, but it wasn’t until it was inserted into the state budget in the summer of 2023 that it saw full passage.
Collins was one of a number of board members who signed a letter asking Gov. Mike DeWine to line-item veto the changes to the state board’s roles in the budget document.
“From my experience being on the board, I think the way that (SB 1) was shoved through and how it was shoved through and when it was shoved through was a little bit unbelievable,” Collins told the Capital Journal. “Something that had essentially stalled in process was added (to the budget) and pushed through the way it was, and then that quickly it was (passed).”
Honesty for Ohio Education
As the board faced drastic legislative changes and a significant reduction in the authority it held, Collins started to wonder if being a member would help her make the most change, something she says she looks for in any career move she makes.
Armed with a superintendent’s license, she debated going back into schools. Ultimately, the departure of Honesty for Ohio Education’s executive director at the end of 2023, and the fact that she’d just had a baby that November made Collins reflect on all the aspects of education and the changes needed.
“It’s a scary time as a parent, it’s a scary time for education,” she said. “I’m worried about my own kids, I’m worried about everyone else’s kids.”
As a staunch supporter of public education, the changes being made on a state level with the transformation of the ODEW and the implementation of near-universal private school vouchers made her nervous about the future of her chosen field.
But like the times with her grandfather years ago, the connection between education and civic duty floated to the top of her mind.
“On a grander scale, I’m really, really, really worried that we’re losing our democracy, and for me education and democracy are in this reciprocal relationship,” Collins said.
Honesty for Ohio Education started in 2021 as a reaction to “critical race theory” bills that sought to keep children from learning the connection between race and American history, with claims that the bills would protect children from feeling guilt for history.
The group started small, but as they began testifying against CRT bills, among others, the group’s numbers grew, and now the coalition “has outgrown itself” from its nascent days, according to Collins.
“That’s a response to the attacks on education, it’s the attacks on LGBTQ+ kids, it’s the attacks on multi-racial education, it’s the attacks on honest history,” she said. “All of that … has created this avalanche with Honesty where we’re at this influx, where we have to decide how we step into adulthood, essentially.”
But as the coalition makes its next moves, Collins said it plans to stay focused on things like state curriculum, fights against book bans and how schools can work better, even for the 10% of students outside of the public school system.
“It’s not just public education … it’s about the kids everywhere in any educational environment who deserve to be safe and have honest and diverse, inclusive education,” Collins told the Capital Journal.
The coalition focuses on content in schools, but Collins said the ability for school districts to succeed certainly comes down to how well they’re funded and supported by state and local sources.
Public education is a “common good” for Collins, and that means the 90% of Ohio children in public education should be taken care of in the way the Ohio Constitution dictates. For public education unions, advocacy groups and for Collins, that includes full implementation of the Fair School Funding Plan.
That reform of the state’s public school funding model emphasizes a formula based around the needs of individual school districts, to allow schools who have more need than others to build up their performance.
The plan as it is now began it’s push through the legislature in August 2020 but negotiations and the hesitance of legislative leaders like Senate President Matt Huffman to push out the entire $10 billion per year plan in one shot led to a six-year phase-in. The plan is currently up to about 66% implementation.
Meanwhile, however, the General Assembly fully funded what amounts to a near-universal private school voucher program in the last budget cycle, allowing students in what are considered under-performing public school districts to leave and take state-funded scholarships with them to nearby private schools if their household income is up to 450% of the federal poverty level, or $135,000 for a family of four.
“When we pass universal voucher bills that give more money to students when they leave the school than a lot of the schools receive for that student, that’s a sign of the value that at least our legislature places on public education kids,” Collins said.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Our schools are a vital component of our community, and our students thrive thanks to the dedication of our educators. We rank in the top 3% of districts in the state, with 97% of districts having more teacher support per student. Our teachers and staff are dedicated, as are our wonderful students. We personally, have four children and three of them in Loveland schools. It has been amazing to watch how they thrive and grow as people.
Collins’ dad and brother both struggled in school as well, and it was through their struggles that she saw “how hard it was for some people to be successful.”