Budget conference committee take backward steps

If one had hoped that the budget conference committee would take the Governor, House and Senate education policy plans and blend them into a better product, those hopes were dashed yesterday.

The budget continues to disinvest in Ohio's public education system to the tune of $532.7 million compared to 2010-2011 funding levels. To add further insult to that injury, in order to pass along income tax cuts to Ohio's wealthiest citizens, the GOP controlled legislature is also eliminating the 12.5% property tax rollback. A homeowner would face paying an additional $4.38 per mill for every $100,000 in taxable property value on new levies - making those levies a tougher sell for struggling schools.

In other areas of education policy, the conference committee failed too. The Senate had proposed to reduce the weight of a teachers evaluation using value-added from 50% to 35%. However, the conference committee reversed that policy improvement leaving the absurd over-reliance of value-add in place at 50%. Furthermore, the Senate had proposed eliminating the scores from teachers evaluations of students who were unexcused absent for 30 days or more. This would have been down from the current law of 60 days. The Conference committee reset that to an objectionable 45 days. For reference, Ohio Revised Code states that a student is chronically truant after only 15 days of unexcused absence - so why any teacher should be evaluated based on chronically truant students can only be explained by the legislature wanting to be punitive towards educators.

According to Gongwer

Conferees did adopt some last minute tweaks to the school funding that Republicans said would steer some additional money to poorer urban and rural districts.

One amendment would shift some funding from the K-3 literacy fund for all schools to economically disadvantaged districts and charter schools, according to House Republican policy aide Colleen Grady. However, the revision would not significantly alter the bottom line on K-12 spending.

So in order to more adequately fund rural school districts the legislature decided not to add more money to the put but to shift money from their own 3rd grade reading guarantee. This isn't education policy, it is madness.

Other notable changes

• Revise the enrollment count for funding traditional school districts by switching to an annualized processed that would be updated three times a year starting in 2015.
• Remove a funding guarantee for charter schools rated "excellent" for three years consecutively.
• Subject private school students to state testing requirements if more than 65% of the population uses state vouchers, while allowing pupils not on scholarships to opt out of the exams.
• Specify that homeschooled children and students moving into Ohio could obtain for EdChoice vouchers if they live in an eligible school district.
• Ensure that students attending a STEM school can participate in extracurricular activities in their resident schools.
• Create an advisory committee to guide distribution of the Straight A grant program funds and advise the governing board.
• Cap Straight A fund awards at $5 million for a single grantee and $15 million for a consortium, while allowing the Controlling Board to approve higher amounts.

Budget boosts private & charter schools at the expense of public schools

Innovation Ohio has taken a close look at the public education implications of the budget bill making its way through the legislature

In particular, we find that HB 59:

• sends more money to charters, regardless of performance
• lowers standards for charter schools, exempting them from accountability expected of Ohio’s traditional public schools
• continues the push to privatize our public schools by union-busting and outsourcing
• sends more taxpayer money to fund private schools, and
• forces traditional schools to do more with less

They further found that the senate budget

• Cut 3 in 4 school districts compared to 2010-2011 funding levels, to the tune of $532.7 million.
• Cut 1 in 4 school districts compared to 2012-2013 funding levels.
• Continued the need for an unprecedented $1.3 billion in new school levies for operations that have appeared on local ballots since Kasich took office, and causing 82 percent of school districts to cut staff positions last year.

You can download their report, here.

Why such inequity? Some reason it is because for-profit charter school operators such as David Brennan and William Lager are such huge contributors to the very politicians making these inequitable decisions

Brennan and Lager are the top individual contributors to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate (or close to it) . And they're no slouches when it comes to Gov. John Kasich either. They've given nearly $1 million to politicians since 2008.

It should come as little surprise then, that even though Brennan and Lager operate some of the worst charter schools in the state, they are receiving some of the largest increases in state spending - even more than some of their higher performing charter school peers.

Education News for 05-31-2013

State Education News

• Ohio's school spending could shoot up (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Ohio public school funding would grow by 11 percent over the next two years versus 2012- 2013 spending levels, the largest percent increase in education spending in at least a decade, under the proposal Senate Republicans…Read more...

• School aid would be boosted under Ohio Senate proposal (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Ohio Senate leaders this afternoon proposed boosting basic state aid to districts from $6.3 billion this school year to more than $7 billion…Read more...

• Ohio Senate ups education funding in budget (Columbus Dispatch)

Most Franklin County school districts would see state funding increases averaging nearly 9 percent per year under Senate-proposed changes to the new two-year budget…Read more...

• Schools challenge families to scale back on tech use (Columbus Dispatch)

Her daughter yearned for the television, her son for his iPod. Both parents felt disconnected without phones and computers. But for one week they left electronics untouched.Well, at least the kids did…Read more...

• ODOT grants will help kids get to school more safely (Columbus Dispatch)

The Ohio Department of Transportation has approved $7.2 million in projects to improve safety for students getting to and from school…Read more...

• Senate funding plan aims to assist Ohio education system (Lorain Morning Journal)

A substitute version of Ohio’s school funding plan proposed by the Senate would increase aid for state education $717.4 million over the next 10 years…Read more...

• Bill with similarities to "Cleveland Plan" could soon pass for Columbus schools (Ohio Public Radio)

It’s been a rough school year for Columbus City Schools. The district is under investigation by the State Auditor’s office and the FBI for tampering with student attendance data and grades. And the struggling district has a history of less-than-stellar…Read more...

• Senators say their school funding plan is constitutional (Ohio Public Radio)

Ohio Senators are calling their new budget plan “a work in progress” but they are touting it as a major improvement in funding for Ohio’s public schools…Read more...

• State Senate plan for 2-year budget not as good for TPS (Toledo Blade)

Senate Republicans on Thursday said they will pump $717 million more into basic aid for K- 12 schools during the next two years in the budget they plan to approve next week…Read more...

• School funding plan in the works could increase dollars for some districts (Youngstown Vindicator)

Senate Republicans unveiled a new school-funding formula Thursday that likely will change as it moves through committee deliberations and passage in the Senate…Read more...

Local Education News

• Clear Fork to improve school routes (Mansfield News Journal)

The Ohio Department of Transportation said Thursday it will dole out $7.2 million for 58 different Safe Routes to School projects in Ohio communities…Read more...

• Brecksville-Broadview Heights educators hoping to expand EdCamp (Sun Newspapers)

A pair of Brecksville-Broadview Heights educators once again are teaming to host a free conference about education…Read more...

Senate budget - good, bad, ugly

The much anticipated Senate budget, when it comes to education policy, could be titled "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". We've already discussed the ugly, let's take a look at the good and the bad.

The Good

The statewide parent trigger, proposed by the governor and eliminated by the house, is not proposed by the Senate either and appears dead, for now.

The Senate also includes a fix to HB555 and the onerous teacher evaluation provisions it contained. Here's what the fix proposes

Prescribes that the student academic growth factor must account for 35% (rather than 50% as under current law) of each evaluation under the standards-based state framework for evaluation of teachers developed by the State Board of Education and permits a school district to attribute an additional percentage to the student academic growth factor, not to exceed 15% of each evaluation.

Specifies that, when calculating student academic growth for a teacher evaluation, students who have had 30 or more excused or unexcused absences for the school year must be excluded (rather than excluding students with 60 or more unexcused absences as under current law).

Ohio Revised Code labels a student as a chronic truant if they are absent 14 days, so 30 days is still a high number of absences to allow, but it is certainly better than the ridiculous 60 days in current law. The reduction in the use of VAM to 35% from 50% is a welcome improvement.

The Governor proposed eliminating the single salary schedule, and the House concurred. The Senate however strikes this proposal from their budget. We suspect there will be pressure applied to put this back in. Educators and support professional should continue to apply their own pressure on legislators to keep it out.

The Senate also eliminated the home-school freeloading provision the House added that would have allowed home schoolers to participate in district extra-curricular activities at no expense.

The Bad

The Governor proposed a massive statewide voucher expansion effort, the House concurred, and the Senate has left the proposal in too. With massive opposition to this proposal we were a little surprised the Senate left this unnecessary proposal in their budget.

Charter schools get a number of additional free passes from the Senate, including an e-school exemption for phys ed., an additional qualifying condition for vouchers, and a provision that would make charter school closures more difficult as LSC notes it "May be more difficult to close community schools after July 1, 2013 (compared with current law after that date).". The Senate also eliminates a charter school teacher quality provision for charters populated primarily with students with disabilities. A number of other smaller provisions setting charter schools on a longer path to failure are also propsed by the Senate, such as:

Exempts students of chartered nonpublic schools accredited through the Independent School Association of the Central States from passing the end-of-course examinations as a prerequisite for graduation from high school.

The Charter school business doesn't contribute millions of dollars a year to Republican politicians for nothing.

The challenging

The Senate adds a new levy type aimed at school safety

Authorizes school districts to levy a property tax exclusively for school safety and security purposes. Requires the levy to comply with the same requirements that apply to general school district levies in excess of the 10-mill limitation.

A good intentioned proposal aimed at lowering violence in schools, but there should be concern that a safety levy might reduce local taxpayers appetites for funding levies for normal school operations, the core purpose of schools themselves. School districts will have to be mindful in how they approach this issue.

Here's the full comparative document of the education section of the budget

Senate Sub HB59

Rejected Kasich formula coming back?

The Ohio Senate revealed its version of the Budget, and it contained a number of changes to education policy proposals proposed by the Governor and the House. What it didn't contain was a school funding formula, for that we are told we will have to wait another week. A familiar story.

Based upon reporting, there should be some serious cause for concern. The Toledo Blade reports

A huge chunk still missing from the budget is how the chamber plans to deal with K-12 schools, preventing lawmakers from putting a total price tag on the two-year spending plan for the moment. Talks continue, but Mr. Faber predicted that the final product is likely to be closer to what Mr. Kasich initially proposed than what the House put forth.

Mr. Kasich’s school funding plans, particularly his promise that more money would flow to poorer schools, were initially greeted with optimism by school superintendents across the state. But that mood quickly soured when the administration released numbers showing that some 60 percent of school districts would see no funding increases while some wealthier, fast-growing, suburban districts were in line for large increases.

The House, in turned, capped the growth in subsidies to those suburban schools, resulting in more districts being in line for increases, including Toledo Public Schools. Mr. Faber would not speculate what the Senate’s total K-12 pot of funding would be larger or smaller than in the House version.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a reaction

Senate Minority Leader Eric Kearney, D-North Avondale, said the small business tax cut wouldn’t provide business owners with enough money to create new jobs. He also lamented the budget’s lack of additional funding for local governments and schools.

“Our schools and local communities have suffered drastic cuts since Governor Kasich took office and today’s amendments by Senate Republicans to (the budget bill) did nothing to change that,” he said in a statement. “That’s not good news for local taxpayers who’ve been forced to pick up the slack from state funding cuts by voting for more local levies.”

Senate Republicans said they won’t have education funding numbers until next week, when they plan to reveal their final K-12 funding plan.

The Governor promised that poor districts would receive more, which should not have been a difficult task after he cut education funding by $1.8 billion in his last budget. But even that promise turned out to be empty as almost 400 school districts were set to receive flat funding. The House promised to fix the Governor's mess, and attempted to do so by returning to the Taft era building blocks formula - only they cut school funding by a further $200 million in the process. Now the Ohio Senate wants to return to the Governor's rejected formula. As we predicted, we have a school funding disaster on our hands, unless the Senate is also going to attach significant amounts of additional money to the plan to make it workable.

School administrators were not kind about the Governor's funding formula the first go-around, and here's the graph to demonstrate why

Will Ohio's media be bamboozled a third time by Republican legislators?

Where the polls stand - as voting begins

With two days to go before the first debate, the national and statewide polling continues to show President Obama in a very strong position.

In the Electoral College, Real Clear Politics calculates that the President has expanded his lead to 265 votes to Mitt Romney's 191, an increase of 28 votes for the President over the last 2 weeks.

The NYT polling analyst, 538, also shows President Obama with an increased projected win in the electoral college

In Ohio, the Presidents polling average lead is now outside the margin of error at 5.6%.

This spate of positive polling in Ohio, has President Obama now projected to have a 86.1% chance of prevailing - a full 10% higher than last week

Of further concern to the Romney campaign will be that early voting in Ohio and elsewhere is either about to begin, or already underway. There are going to be fewer and fewer opportunities to change voters minds before their vote is locked in.

Talking Points Memo also notes that the weakening situation Mitt Romney is finding himself in, is having an effect down ticket too. Republicans were favored to take control of the Senate earlier in the year, that chance appears to be receding, as Democrats have now taken leads in a number of swing Senate races.