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WHAT IS YOUR STORY?

The battle for adequate public-school funding has been ongoing for many years. The challenge has escalated in recent years as the state budget is stressed by school choice vouchers and the influx of ESSER funding has increased the general fund cash balances in many districts. The result has been increasing demands on school business officials to advocate for funding at the state level and then to justify collection of existing levies at the local level.

It has been a near-constant refrain from our professional organizations that we need to communicate our story early and often with our elected officials. These stories may have multiple chapters as we explain the impact of state funding decisions on our districts or defend the need to collect on all our tax levies in the face of scrutiny on our cash balances.

While there is a lot of common ground between the 600+ Ohio school districts, each of us owns a unique story. Wealth factors, student and staff demographics, location, local priorities, and more combine to a rich nuanced tale that each of us needs to tell in our own way and words. So, what is your story?

Here is Perrysburg’s story (or at least a piece of it).

Perrysburg Exempted Village School District is in northwest Ohio, in northern Wood County, south of Toledo.   Perrysburg is a relatively wealthy bedroom community.  The district educates approximately 5,800 students in eight buildings (preschool, 4 – K-4 elementaries, 1 - 5/6 intermediate building, 1 - 7/8 jr. high, and 1 - 9-12 high school).  Approximately 10% of the district’s students are supported by special education programs.   The district has 14.2% of its students identified as economically disadvantaged.   Over 25% of the district’s students are identified as gifted.   There are 161 students who are English Language Learners speaking over 20 different languages.  The district’s enrollment is growing at an average rate of 1.5% per year.

Perrysburg Schools are heavily reliant on local funding. The graphic below shows the breakdown between local, state and federal funding.  Today’s story reflects the challenge to protect state funding to ensure a true local and state partnership in funding public education.  

For this portion of the story, we are focused on the Fair School Funding Plan and the impact of the base cost calculations. Base cost funding is the district’s largest source of state funding and is emblematic of the funding challenge.

For this discussion here are some key assumptions:

1. Enrollment will continue to grow at an annual rate of 1.1%
2. Residential valuations and new construction will continue to increase 1.1%/year in non-update or reappraisal years.
3. In the next update year (2026) residential property values will increase 12%.
4. Household incomes will continue to rise at the current trend rate of 7.5%

To build the story we start with what we know – current funding levels. As most people know, district funding reports can be found on the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce (ODEW) website here.

The Perrysburg story begins with the base cost and local capacity reports. From these reports, we determine the split between and state and local share of base costs.  

The story really begins with what happens next. If the Fair School Funding Plan is fully implemented but the inputs (base costs) are not updated the state vs local share is upended as illustrated below:

(Getting to the local capacity numbers can be accomplished through third party help and/or by using the methodology in the state foundation funding calculator found on the site noted above.)

Clearly, when the local factors increase (wealth index) but the base cost inputs are not increased, the district capacity looks greater and greater resulting in less state funding per pupil.  But don’t panic, this doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in total state funding.

Operating under the assumption that the General Assembly will maintain the funding “floor” (or guarantee) at FY20 levels and using the assumptions and calculations from above the funding picture looks as follows:

These calculations very clearly show that, even though Perrysburg is a district with a growing enrollment, with no changes made to the base cost inputs the district will be essentially flat-funded at FY20 levels but driven deeper into the “guarantee.”    At this point, there is no formula.

What happens if base costs are increased modestly 4% in FY26 and FY28?  Using the same analysis as above with the only change being a 4% increase in base costs in FY26 and FY28 here are the results:

Without an increase in base costs each year, the overall state share per pupil still strips over the five years but not so dramatically.    While arguably not sufficient as the table below shows updating base costs has a significant impact on the district remaining formula funded.

Moral of the story…

Without updates to the base cost inputs the Fair School Funding Plan doesn’t work because the lack of changes essentially eliminates the formula.   Growing student enrollment is not enough to overcome the impact of wealth changes.  Local wealth changes combined with not updating the base costs inputs continue to shift the public-school funding burden away from the state and onto local residences. 

That’s our story...what’s yours?