State school funding OK for now; but future is uncertain

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

While some media reports are call­ing Gov­er­nor Kasich’s new edu­ca­tion fund­ing for­mula in the pro­posed bien­nial bud­get a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of fund­ing to edu­ca­tion, dur­ing Mon­day evening’s Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing Dis­trict Trea­surer Feli­cia Drum­mey said it’s not.

Noth­ing is firm yet, Drum­mey said. The bien­nial bud­get must travel through a leg­isla­tive process; a final bud­get doesn’t have to be approved until June 30. The good news is, if the budget’s for­mula holds up under leg­isla­tive scrutiny Big Wal­nut would not see a reduc­tion in state fund­ing for the next two years.

The bad news?

“The gov­er­nor and his staff have put school dis­tricts on notice that the state guar­an­tee is unsus­tain­able and unfair and school dis­tricts should pre­pare for an even­tual phase-out,” Drum­mey said. “The gov­er­nor has said that school dis­tricts would see no reduc­tions in this bud­get. Since we were pre­pared for reduc­tions we’re relieved.

“But the dis­trict has seen a 6.2 per­cent in reduc­tions in state fund­ing since 2010,” Drum­mey con­tin­ued. “Fed­eral stim­u­lus dol­lars replaced most of the holes left by those fund­ing reduc­tions, but when stim­u­lus dol­lars ended the state did not step in and fill the gap.”

Drum­mey said if the state guar­an­tee were phased out the dis­trict would lose an addi­tional $4.3 mil­lion per year in today’s dol­lars. Drum­mey said mak­ing up those lost dol­lars locally would be the equiv­a­lent of a 7-mil levy – an addi­tional bur­den that would have to be shoul­dered by dis­trict prop­erty owners.

Board mem­ber Andy Wecker had a prob­lem with that scenario.

“Let me get this straight,” Wecker said. “We pay income tax and sales tax into the state gen­eral fund, but if the guar­an­tee is phased out none of those dol­lars will come back to us?”

Drum­mey said that was true.

“With a 105-square-mile school dis­trict, the state says we have a lot of real estate val­u­a­tion for 3,000 stu­dents,” Drum­mey said. “The for­mula says we have increased tax­ing capac­ity, and the governor’s phi­los­o­phy is to send those dol­lars to poorer school dis­tricts, so the under­ly­ing flaw in the for­mula is still there.”

Drum­mey also said the state’s fig­ures for district’s like Big Wal­nut does not include high costs like trans­porta­tion, and some­how the state used lower enroll­ment num­bers for Big Wal­nut than the cur­rent stu­dent pop­u­la­tion – fur­ther skew­ing the formula.

Adding to the con­fu­sion, Drum­mey said, is that there has been no true for­mula since 2009. Every­thing since then has been a patch, she said.

“The state can’t abdi­cate on its shared respon­si­bil­ity to fund schools,” Drum­mey said. “In the state con­sti­tu­tion it says the state will fund edu­ca­tion with what­ever means pos­si­ble, includ­ing rais­ing taxes. Phas­ing out the guar­an­tee for a dis­trict like Big Wal­nut would mean the state is abdi­cat­ing on its respon­si­bil­ity to fund education.

“The dev­ils in the details,” Drum­mey added. “The good news is we will be sta­ble for the next two years.”

Drum­mey did have other good news. In her monthly finan­cials report to the board Drum­mey said Jan­u­ary rev­enue was $276,000 above projections.

“Income tax rev­enue was 5 per­cent higher than pro­jected,” Drum­mey said. “That’s employer with­hold­ing and a very pos­i­tive indi­ca­tor that peo­ple are back to work or work­ing more hours. State aid also included $64,000 from casino revenue.”

Drum­mey said the next dis­burse­ment of casino rev­enue would be $71 per pupil and come in August, but that would be dur­ing the next fis­cal year.

“We also had $190,000 less than pro­jected in expen­di­tures in two cat­e­gories, ben­e­fits and pur­chase ser­vices,” Drum­mey said.

Drum­mey said the reduc­tion in ben­e­fits costs is the result of mov­ing to United Health Care as an employee health insur­ance car­rier, and from a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the district’s health insur­ance design dur­ing the most recent round of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing with dis­trict unions.

“Pre­vi­ously we had what’s called a very rich plan,” Drum­mey explained. “But dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions we asked employ­ees to help share insur­ance costs through deduc­tions and an increase in some co-pays. If we have vari­ances in the bud­get,” she added, “these are the kinds of vari­ances we want to see.”

As an added note, Drum­mey said some local res­i­dents are get­ting brochures from pri­vate com­pa­nies that, for a fee, will file prop­erty tax com­plaints for homeowners.

Drum­mey said Delaware County Audi­tor George Kaitsa said to be very wary of com­pa­nies assist­ing with prop­erty val­u­a­tion appeals. One pri­vate firm’s brochure said that for $159 prop­erty taxes would be reviewed.

Drum­mey said if prop­erty own­ers believe prop­erty taxes are incor­rect they could file an appeal (a prop­erty val­u­a­tion com­plaint) at no cost with the Delaware County Auditor’s Office.

The Delaware County Board of Revi­sion reviews all prop­erty val­u­a­tion com­plaints. The board of revi­sion is a three-member board that includes a rep­re­sen­ta­tive appointed by a county com­mis­sioner, the county trea­surer and the county audi­tor. Each case is con­sid­ered on its own mer­its based on evi­dence pre­sented by the homeowner.

Drum­mey said the request form must be returned to the Delaware County Auditor’s Office by March 1.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 12 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.