Another Kasich Funding Plan Fumble

During testimony on Tuesday evening, Gov. John Kasich's Education Funding Czar Barbara Mattei-Smith said she could not do projections on what Charter Schools would cost under the Governor's new Charter School formula because she didn't have the data. The assertion was made again this morning during testimony from the Ohio Department of Education.

It is important to figure this out because under the current system, school districts lose more than $800 million a year to Charters, leaving kids not in Charters with 6.5% less state revenue than the state says they need to succeed. The new Charter School formula is more complicated for districts and Charters to figure out, so Charter-by-Charter projections should be produced to allow lawmakers and schools to plan for the new reality.

Last night on the Ohio Department of Education's website, I found a Charter School Simulation tool that allows Charter Schools to figure out what their payments would be from different school districts, given the kids they are educating.

Am I dense, or could the state simply change the formulas in the Excel spreadsheet to reflect the new Charter School formula and do a pretty good approximation so that districts and Charters have a good idea of what's coming?

So why, again, couldn't the Governor's Education Funding Czar do that at some point during the two years the office has been developing this funding formula?

This is getting weird.

Texas Superintendent's Eloquent Defense of Public Education

I came across this speech given by a District Superintendent in Texas named John Kuhn. Thanks to Diane Ravitch's blog. I have decided to run the speech in its entirety because it's important to understand that there remain folks out there who are talking about this stuff in this way.

"Are there any teachers in this crowd?

I want to say something to teachers that our lawmakers should have said long ago: Thank You! Thank you for keeping our children safe. Thank you for drying their tears when they scrape their knees, for cheering on our junior high basketball players, for going up to your room on Sundays to get ready to teach my kids on Monday. Gracias por cuidarlos! As a dad, I thank you.

Coaches, thank you for fixing little girls' softball swings and for showing our boys how to tie their ties. Thank you for getting our children safely home on the yellow dog after late ballgames, marching contests, and one-act plays.

Thank you for buying all those raffle tickets, hams, pies, discount cards, Girl Scout cookies, insulated mugs and pumpkin rolls, for buying more playoff shirts than any one person could possibly need and on top of all that spending your own money on pencils and prizes and supplies for your classroom.

There are those poor deluded souls who say you take more than you give, and I disagree with them with everything I am. Don’t let them get you down. They wouldn’t last a day in your classroom. You are NOT a drain on this economy; you are a bubbling spring of tomorrow’s prosperity. You’re a fountain of opportunity for other people’s children. As educational attainment goes up, crime, teen pregnancy, unemployment, and prison rates all go down. Squalor and ignorance retreat. Social wounds begin to heal. Our state progresses; our tomorrow brightens. What you do, teacher, is priceless. You don’t create jobs. You create job creators.

Some people don't understand why you do what you do. They think merit pay will make you work harder, as if you're holding back. They don’t understand what motivates you. They think the threat of being labeled "unacceptable" will inspire you to care about the quality of your instruction, as if the knowledge that you hold the future in your hands on a daily basis is not incentive enough.

Maybe these sticks and carrots work for bad teachers, but they only demoralize the great ones, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of great teachers in our public school classrooms today.

Some people have forgotten that good teachers actually exist. They spend so much time and effort weeding out the bad ones that they’ve forgotten to take care of the good ones. This bitter accountability pesticide is over-spraying the weeds and wilting the entire garden.

You stand on the front lines of poverty and plenty, on the front lines of our social stratification. You are the people who shove their fingers into gushing wounds of inequality that our leaders won’t even talk about, and you aren’t afraid. You’re the last of the Good Samaritans, and you aren’t afraid, even as they condemn you for trying but failing to save every last kid in your classroom. You aren’t afraid, and you keep trying, and you haven’t faltered. You deserve to be saluted, not despised. You deserve to be acclaimed. You deserve so much more than the ugly scapegoating that privatizers peddle in the media and our halls of government.

Teacher, bus driver, coach, lunch lady, custodian, maintenance man, business manager, aide, secretary, principal, and, yes, even you superintendents out there trying to hold it all together—you serve your state with skill and honor and dignity, and I’m sorry that no one in power has the guts to say that these days. History will recognize that the epithets they applied to your schools said more about leaders who refused to confront child poverty than the teachers who tried valiantly to overcome it. History will recognize that teachers in these bleak years stood in desperate need of public policy help that never came. Advocacy for hurting children was ripped from our lips with a shush of “no excuses." These hateful labels should be hung around the necks of those who have allowed inequitable school funding to persist for decades, those who refuse to tend to the basic needs of our poorest children so that they may come to school ready to learn.

They say 100,000 kids are on a waiting list for charter schools. Let me tell you about another waiting list. There are 5 million kids waiting for this Legislature to keep our forefathers’ promises. There are 5 million children, and three of them live with me, and they’re all waiting for somebody in Austin, Texas, to stand up for them and uphold the constitution. There’s a waiting list of 5 million kids and this government says they can just keep waiting. How long must they wait?

If you support public schools I want to tell you about a new website. Go to texaskidswaiting.com and add your child's name to the public school waiting list, the list of kids waiting for this government to provide adequate school funding. That's Texaskidswaiting.com.

Our forefathers’ promises must be kept. We want fair and adequate resources in our kids' schools. We want leaders who don't have to be dragged to court to do right by our children.

It’s not okay to default on constitutional promises. It’s not okay to neglect schools until they break, to deliberately undermine our public school. These traditional institutions have honorably served their communities for generations. It’s not okay to privatize a public school system that strong and generous people built and left to us; it's not okay for Austin to confiscate buildings built by local taxpayers and give them away to cronies and speculators.

These buildings aren't just schools, they're touchstones. They're testaments to our local values. The Friday night lights that have illuminated our skies for decades, the school gyms that have echoed with play since the Greatest Generation was young—these aren’t monuments to sports. They’re monuments to community. They’re beacons of our local control, of the togetherness we cherish in our hometowns and city neighborhoods. We don’t want education fads imposed on us by Austin or, even worse, out-of-state billionaires.

What we want is simple, tried, and true. We want what this state promised in 1876. And to those who want to take away that promise, I know some moms and trustees and local businesspeople who will say what brave Texans have said before: “Come and take it.”

Two years ago I asked state leaders to come to our aid; they responded by cutting school funding by billions. But help did come: it came from you. The people of Texas are the cavalry that will save Texas schools. Two years ago may have been the Alamo; but this year may well be our San Jacinto.

I will end by saying this to the advocates who are bravely defending public education: thank you. And one more thing: do not go gently into that good night. Stand and fight, and save our schools.

Thank you."

Investigation of Angry Superintendent Looks Politically Motivated

Some concerning news came out this morning regarding the Warren County investigation of Franklin City Superintendent Arlon Elam's epic letter to residents he issued a couple weeks ago. For those who don't remember, Mr. Elam wrote that Gov. John Kasich was "untruthful" about his education funding plan and asked his residents to "join me in an active campaign to ensure that Gov. Kasich and any legislator who supports him arenot re-elected."

 

That last sentence was the cause for Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell to seek a criminal investigation into Elam's statements.

 

However, an article in the Dayton Daily News today details how closely Mr. Fornshell's office communicated with GOP operatives the day he announced the investigation.

Mr. Fornshell denied the state GOP asked him to d o anything untoward. However, it sure doesn't look good.

 

In fact, Mr. Fornshell dropped the case after Mr. Elam paid $269 to cover the cost of the one page of the mailing that called for Gov. Kasich's ouster.

 

To give you an idea of scale, I went on the Ohio Secretary of State's website and downloaded campaign finance data. I have included a chart showing how much Mr. Elam has spent on political activity during the last 10 years ($100 to one candidate, plus the $269 fine) and how much the state's most powerful Charter School Operator, David Brennan, has contributed just to candidates.

 

Apparently, though, Mr. Elam's letter is the problem.

 

Remember that thanks in no small measure to Mr. Brennan's political activity, every child in Ohio not in a Charter School receives 6.5% less state revenue than the state says they need because of the state's largess to Mr. Brennan and his fellow operators.

 

 

Kasich Can't Explain DeRolph District's Future Cut

Gov. John Kasich's Education Czar, Dick Ross, and his Education Funding Czar, Barbara Mattei-Smith, have repeatedly said the reason poor districts get zero increases and rich districts get huge ones in their new education plan is this: Poor districts are seeing huge increases in their property wealth and are losing pupils.

"Barbara Mattei-Smith,told the Dispatch Friday that since 2009 in rural areas "land values are increasing and taxation has updated agricultural values on property." She also said that many suburban districts that would receive more money under Kasich's plan have seen substantial increases in enrollment, which affects their funding under the new plan." -- Athens Messenger, Feb. 10, 2013
 

"Kasich education policy advisor Barbara Mattei-Smith said that’s because school districts that many people think of as “poor” are not actually poor for the purposes of determining state funding under the Kasich plan. In recent years, property values in rural Ohio rose while property values in cities and suburbs fell. And, at the same time, rural and urban districts lost students, while suburban districts grew, Mattei-Smith said." -- State Impact News Feb. 6, 2013
 

However, neither of these explanations actually pan out. One need look no further than Northern Local in Perry County -- the district, ironically, where the DeRolph school funding lawsuit originated.

Under Kasich's Education Plan, Northern Local is on the guarantee for nearly 40% of its state revenue. Kasich said he wants to eliminate guarantees sooner rather than later. That means Northern Local is looking at a $4.1 million cut in state aid very soon.

While the district's per pupil valuation went up by 36% between 2006 and 2011, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation, their number of pupils dropped a whopping .73% (50 kids) between 2007 and 2012. The district raises 10 times less on a mill of property tax than Olentangy, which will receive a 433% increase over the biennium from this budget.

So Kasich's plan effectively will cut Northern Local by 40%, even though they have the same number of kids and raise 10 times less money on mill than Olentangy.

This goes to show that the reason poor districts are being put on the guarantee has nothing to do with property values or pupil losses; it's because the Kasich plan drops the amount the state says kids need to succeed from $5,732 per pupil to $5,000 per pupil -- a drop that disproportionately hurts poorer districts that are dependent upon state resources.

Districts like Northern Local.

Districts that are receiving no additional funding from this formula, and are looking at significant cuts with the elimination of the guarantee, are looking at losing one out of every five state dollars they receive, on average. Meanwhile they have lost about 7% of their pupils, on average. This is not a "money follows the child" scheme. It's simply a scheme.

Until the Administration and others realize that the problem is an inadequate foundation amount, not dwindling numbers of kids or exploding local valuations, it is difficult to imagine a long-term fix to this formula's inherently inadequate distribution of state resources to our children.

Ohio Graduation Requirement is PSAT?

Way back in 2009, Ohio adopted something called the ACT Plus -- a new graduation test to replace the outdated (and, frankly, useless Ohio Graduation Test). The idea was every Ohio student would have to take a college entrance exam in order to graduate from an Ohio High School.

I have now been told that Acting Superintendent Michael Sawyers is going to require the PLAN/PSAT -- the standardized test taken during Junior Year that is the basis for National Merit Scholars -- be taken instead. What a blown opportunity, if true.

Let me explain why.

The thing I really liked about having every Ohio kid take a college entrance exam were the opportunities this opened up for kids from communities and backgrounds that didn't even consider college as a post-high school option. It reminded me a lot of the work Wayne White did in Appalachia with the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education. When I spoke with Mr. White in 2002 for a series of stories I wrote for the Akron Beacon Journal, I was expecting to hear about some brilliant new assessment technique or something that would inspire kids in traditionally non-college promoting environments to head off to college. This is how Mr. White referred to it in my story:

 

Forty years ago, White became the first in his family to go to college. Coming from Lawrence County – one of Ohio’s poorest and least educated – that was something.

His dream was to work at a Kentucky factory , where he could have made enough money to buy the white and red 1957 Chevy he lusted after. That changed when, at the urging of his high school principal ,White applied for and got a scholarship to Ohio University.

The Athens campus soon overwhelmed the Appalachian kid. When he returned home during his first semester, he confided in his mother that maybe college wasn’t for him. All he wanted was the ’57 Chevy.

‘‘When I started back the next morning , there was this little blue suitcase sitting in the hallway,’’ White said. He asked his mother what was going on.

‘‘You can do this, and I’m going back with you,’’ she replied. Sure enough, White’s mother roomed with him for a couple months – enough time for White’s fears to subside.

For his culture to change.

After graduating with honors from OU and a career in education, he has become executive director of the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education, which tries to promote college as a viable option for some of the least educated people in America.

It’s working.

‘‘We’re the suitcase for our kids,’’ White said. How is the center changing the culture in Appalachia? Simple : They post college acceptance letters in cafeterias; every time a student goes on a college trip, they bring back a school pennant and display it at their high school; at sporting events, principals recognize students who get into college.

They change the culture.

‘‘We don’t win every battle,’’ White said. But they win their fair share.

It wasn’t long ago that Newcomerstown only had 28 percent of its graduates go to college. Now 80 percent do.

Shortly after I wrote about his efforts in Appalachia, Wayne White won a MacArthur Foundation award -- the so-called "genius awards". Wayne White passed away not long after that.

 

I always thought of the ACT Plus as a continuation of Mr. White's work. One of the greatest challenges in getting kids to go to college is helping them realize that they can actually go to, and succeed in, higher education.

 

Having kids who never thought college was an option take a college entrance exam where they could score well enough to think of college as a viable opportunity is a priceless (and cheap) way to matriculate more children to college. Ohio needs to promote more folks going to college.

 

Forcing kids to take a PSAT, which only is supposed to prepare kids for the SAT (or ACT), is not going to inspire kids to go to college because the scores won't get anyone into college. The kids will have to take an additional exam. The chances of a kid from a tough background doing that on their own, even if the blow the doors off the PSAT, are extremely slim.

 

Ohio shouldn't back off the standard of having every kid in this state take a test that can open up worlds of opportunity for them and their families. Unfortunately, it looks as if that's exactly what Ohio is planning to do.

 

Somewhere, Wayne White weeps.

Is Voucher Expansion Constitutional?

Inside the budget document for Gov. Kasich's new education plan resides a detail that struck me as curious. Gov. Kasich has expanded vouchers to children who are living at or below 200% of poverty (covering 1/2 of all kids in Ohio, by the way). The $25.5 million earmarked over the next two years for the program is coming directly out of State Lottery Funds.

The program signals a dramatic new direction for vouchers in Ohio. They had previously been billed as tickets for children in struggling school districts to escape to better private schools. However, after more than two decades of research (including here in Ohio) indicating that kids who take vouchers fare no better than their traditional school counterparts on performance measures, the tide has shifted -- something I blogged about last year. Now it's about offering choices to children of poorer families the opportunities wealthy families have. Trouble is, at a little more than $4,000 per voucher, poor kids in wealthy districts will not be able to afford to go to the far more expensive private schools in those wealthy areas. So how much opportunity will these afford? My guess is they'll end up not being used, or used primarily by kids who are already in private schools.

But back to my point.

The $25.5 million earmarked for the program is coming straight out of Lottery Profits money. When the lottery was sold to the public in the 1970s, it was sold as a way to help work out Ohio's struggles with adequately funding public education, not private education. So is the new plan to spend that money on private education run afoul of the intent of the Lottery provision in the Constitution?

It's a question that should be asked.

Kasich Ed Plan's Problematic Commitment to Challenged Kids

Gov. John Kasich has spent much of his time talking about Achievement Everywhere -- the name of his new Education Plan -- by discussing his commitment to Special Education and other targeted  groups of especially needy children. Among those are English Language Learners and others.

Here's the problem: While his staff are claiming he is using Special Education weights developed in 2006 and funding them at 100% (it had been 90% for years) and adjusting the amount to account for inflation, he's put the amounts in code as a dollar figure. That will end up short changing Special Education and ELL children beyond this biennium.

Here's why the commitment is not as long-lasting as Kasich is making it sound.

Dollar amounts are never changed in code. This is why it's such a big deal when fines for crimes get changed. Dollar figures gather dust when put in law. Why is this? Because legislators generally don't like increasing money in budgets. Especially lately.

How weighted funding usually works is like this: Say the state says every kid needs $5,000 (as Achievement Everywhere sets the bar, which is what the amount was in 2005). A weight would then multiply that $5,000 by 1.25, or whatever the additional resources are needed to accommodate that child's special needs. So all legislators have to change is one number, not a dozen.

Here's the problem with setting the amount as a dollar figure. I will put it in a chart for you to see more clearly. I put the base aid amounts at $5,000 per pupil, which is what the Kasich plan sets it at, and $5,732 per pupil, which is what the previous per pupil formula set it at:

Here's what it looks like, graphically:

As you can see, if state aid goes up, so does Special Education funding, if there are weights in code. However, Special Education funding does not similarly increase if the dollar amount remains the same. This is why even the most conservative of education funding gurus like true weighted funding.

Putting the weights themselves in, though, requires that the state also put in the base funding amount upon which the weight is supposed to be applied. It would require, therefore, for the Kasich plan to put in code that the per pupil base amount is $5,000. It would require an admission that the Kasich Plan estimates the cost of a basic education today to be the same as it was in 2005.

I'm not holding my breath for that admission.

Is One of State's Better Charters Cheating?

I have long admired the work done at the Intergenerational School in Cleveland -- one of 14 Charter Schools in this state whose children all come from districts that rate more poorly than they do on report card and performance index scores.

However, a disturbing report came out this week from Reuters that seems to indicate that Intergenerational is screening children and taking ones that are already high-performing. That practice is illegal in Ohio.

Here's the pertinent part:

Shortly after the school year began this fall, Michelle Newman got a call from The Intergenerational Charter School in Cleveland, Ohio. A spot had opened up in a third-grade classroom, and her 8-year-old son, Lucas, was first on the waiting list. Administrators said he could enroll after he took an exam.

The exam, part of a two-hour assessment, included questions drawn from state standardized tests. It didn't go well. Lucas was still in summer vacation mode and balked at some math problems, his mother said.

Still, she said she was shocked when the principal called a few days later to say Lucas could not enroll because staff had determined that he wasn't academically or developmentally ready for third-grade - even though he was enrolled in the third grade at his local public school, where he remains.

Charter schools say they take everyone, "but they didn't take him," Newman said. "It's not really about educating all children."

Eric McGarvey, admissions coordinator for Intergenerational, said the school assesses applicants through testing, an interview and a report-card review because "we don't want to accept a child into a grade level that they're not ready for. It doesn't do them any justice." Students who are rejected, he said, go to the top of the waiting list for the grade teachers deem appropriate.

A spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education said charter schools are obligated to admit students into the grade they would attend at their neighborhood school, regardless of skill. The community authorizer that supervises Intergenerational Charter said that it is confident the school's admissions policy is legal but that it will review the policy.

Now, I don't know if this practice at Intergenerational violates the law. But I bet Cleveland Municipal Schools would love to not accept children into grades the schools didn't feel the children could succeed in. But Cleveland has the obligation to take all children, and their test scores perhaps reflect this responsibility.

I sure hope Intergenerational is not breaking any laws. I have said many times to anyone who will listen that we need more Charters like Intergenerational. But if their success is based upon their admitting only children who they think will succeed, rather than turning around kids who were otherwise not going to succeed, perhaps their success is not what we thought it was.

And my fear is if Intergenerational is doing this, how many other of our really successful Charter Schools are doing it too?

Public schools have to take whoever walks in their door. Charter schools have to as well, under Ohio law. I sure hope Intergenerational is.

If Only Arnol Elam Ran a Charter School

Over the last couple of days, the Ohio education world has been all a-twitter about an epically angry letter Franklin City Schools Superintendent Arnol Elam wrote to his community that called Gov. John Kasich a liar and asked the community to work to un-elect Kasich and anyone who is allied with him.

The foundation of his anger was Kasich's school funding plan, which Kasich told superintendents would help poor districts at the expense of wealthy ones. However, the district-by-district projections released later show that for every additional dollar going to a property wealthy district, 25 cents goes to a property poor district like Elam's.

Well, it looks like the Warren County Prosecutor is now investigating whether Elam broke any laws.

Here's what gets me. Charter School operators like David Brennan are allowed to dump millions upon millions of dollars into political campaigns, yet if Elam writes a letter, he broke the law. Oh to be a Charter School Operator, right?

As a former reporter, I really do not like these provisions of Ohio law that restrict First Amendment rights. I think Elam has every right to express his anger in defense of the children he is charged with educating, just as David Brennan has every right to spend millions of dollars to elect candidates that will continue to let him collect hundreds of millions of dollars in state money.

Under Kasich's plan, Elam's district, which got cut last budget by 8.75% and is Warren County's poorest, will get zero resources to replace that. Meanwhile, Warren County's wealthiest districts get double-digit increases. In addition, Franklin City's kids lose 5.3% of of their revenue to Charter Schools every year because the state pays so much more for Charter School kids in a system David Brennan devised with the help of Warren County and other Ohio politicians. That means David Brennan's investment in the Ohio General Assembly has directly harmed kids in Franklin City.

Yet Elam's breaking the law for writing a letter.

In addition, 99.9% of the money Franklin City sends to Charters that are rated by the state goes to Charters that rate worse than Franklin City on either the Report Card rating or Performance Index Score.

So maybe you can understand Mr. Elam's frustration. And maybe it's time for Mr. Elam's First Amendment rights to be as well-protected as David Brennan's. After all, since the mid-1990s, Mr. Brennan has received about $1 billion in state money to educate children in schools that largely underperform traditional school districts.

For some perspective, it would take Elam's district 120 years to spend $1 billion of state money at their current amount.

I've heard from some of the more conspiratorially minded out there that it's not a mistake that the County Prosecutor in a county that voted 70-30 for Mitt Romney is bringing down the hammer on a superintendent who said something negative about the Republican Governor of Ohio.

I don't know Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell, but the vast majority of prosecutors I know in Ohio would never do such a thing. Because they feel, as I do, that intentionally chilling First Amendment expression for political gain is something for which we should have little tolerance.

IO Exposes How Ohio's Charter Funding System Hurts Kids

Innovation Ohio has released a report that details how the way Charter Schools are funded in Ohio has hurt kids both in Charters and in the schools that lose children and money to Charters.

As I've said many times before, I'm not against Charters. I do not like how they're funded in Ohio. And I don't like how poorly they've performed overall.

It is unfair that 90% of the money going to Charter Schools that are rated in Ohio go from better performing school districts to poorer performing Charter Schools on the Performance Index. Or that every kid in this state not in a Charter receives $235 less in state aid because of how Charter Schools are funded.

We must fix this. For all our kids.

Epic Superintendent Anger About Kasich

I mentioned this letter in a post yesterday, but the letter is so amazing, I had to break it out on its own.

I don't think I have ever seen a school district Superintendent as angry as I saw in this epic letter from Franklin City Superintendent Arnol Elam, which was sent to every resident of the Franklin City School District. I've embedded it here, but I've also linked to it here.

Franklin City Schools

150 East Sixth Street  l Franklin, OH 45005

Telephone  937-746-1699    Fax: 937-743-8620

Arnol Elam, Superintendent

 

 

Governor Misleads Ohio Residents

 

 

 

February 2013

 

 

 

To the parents, staff, and friends of Franklin City Schools:

 

School funding has been in the news this past week. I'd like to share my perspective and what it means to our district. 

 

Governor John Kasich was untruthful last week, and in doing so, finally clarified that kids in poor school districts don't count.

 

Ohio's school funding model has been declared unconstitutional four times. The Kasich administration promised since his inauguration to develop a new funding system. On Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, the governor told Ohio's school superintendents, "This is not hard to figure out: If you're poor, you're going to get more. If you are rich, you're going to get less. If you have gifted students, you're going to get more. If you have disabled students, you're going to get more." In his remarks, he promoted $1.2 B in additional education funding. 

 

The Kasich administration's school funding proposal released this week outlines a distribution nearly opposite to what's stated above, and actually includes only $564 M in additional funding. 

 

60% of Ohio's school districts are scheduled to receive NO additional funds including the poorest districts in Ohio's Appalachian counties. Neither do the poorest districts in Warren County. Our district, already reeling under an 8.75% reduction in state and federal funding, will receive no additional monies under Kasich's plan. 

 

By every measure, we are the poorest district in Warren County. 44.66% of our students are in poverty. In contrast, Mason's figure is 6.25%. Our district's median household income is $29,900. The county's highest is Springboro at $61,271. Franklin has the highest percentage of students with a disability -- 16.1%. Despite this, Kasich's plan gives ADDITIONAL monies to Mason, Springboro and Kings. 

 

In my five years at Franklin, I've seen firsthand how the state's educational policies discriminate against low wealth districts like ours -- from funding to district report cards to everything in between.  This is the kind of disparity that exists among Ohio districts, and which the state has repeatedly refused to address.

 

The governor's funding plan, has taken from the children that attend the Franklin City Schools and gives to the rich, continues that discrimination. Three Warren County districts -- Mason, Springboro, and Kings -- are targeted for funding increases between 2.1 to 25.6%. Frankly, this is both unfair and unbelievable. 

 

The state defends the "fairness" of their funding plan, saying that the money follows students. I spoke to our new State Rep. Ron Maag to see if he could help secure release of the funding proposal's calculations. Conveniently, the details are unavailable. 

 

Unfortunately, the initial positive buzz based on the governor's Jan. 31 statement has created the impression that our unconstitutional school funding model has been "fixed." The state's untruthfulness has done irreparable damage to districts who have May ballot issues; those districts will now have a difficult time convincing voters that they still need additional funds. 

 

On Jan. 28, State Rep Maag attended the Franklin Area Chamber of Commerce meeting. He said the Kasich administration's number one focus is job creation. Next week, I have to determine how to cut jobs to in order to meet the reductions in state funding. I don't know how to reconcile the cuts we must make with the administration's stated goals of creating jobs.

 

As parents and friends of our district, I hope you will do two things: First, please join me in an active campaign to ensure that Gov. Kasich and any legislator who supports him are not re-elected. Second, I hope you will contact our state officials and urge them to ask Gov. Kasich to return to the drawing board on his school funding proposal. This is their contact information:

 

-         State Rep. Ron Maag, 77 S. High St, 13th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215    (614) 644-6023

 

-         State Senator Shannon Jones, Senate Building, 1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor,  Columbus, OH 43215,    (614) 466-9737

 

As always, I welcome your input, comments, and suggestions. Please contact me at aelam@franklincityschools.com or (937) 746-1699. 

Arnol Elam

Superintendent, Franklin City Schools

The letter I think speaks volumes toward the betrayal poorer school districts felt after seeing district-by-district projections from Gov. John Kasich's office after the introduction of his new school funding plan. I somehow don't think sending Education Czar Dick Ross and Education Funding Czar Barbara Mattei-Smith to Arnol Elam's office to explain to him how he doesn't understand that he's really a wealthy district will fly, do you?

Because that's apparently what they've been doing in other districts. At least, that's what they testified yesterday they were doing.

I have never seen superintendents so steamed about an education plan. This is starting to feel a lot like DeRolph Redux, where buses of kids show up on the statehouse lawn and force lawmakers' hands.

Can't say that's a bad thing.

Long and short is this isn't getting fixed with a couple technical tweaks in the plan. This is sounding like it will require a complete overhaul of Kasich's complete overhaul.