Columnists
Educators can't be only voices in 'conversations'
By GARTH BISHOP, COMMENTARY EDITOR
Published: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 11:52 AM EST
Imagine you have a list of items friends and loved ones have requested as holiday gifts. I doubt it will be much of a stretch.

You've known for some time what everyone wants, and now you have to figure out a way to pay for it all.

So you ask that same group of friends and loved ones what they suggest. But of course, all they can come up with is more gift ideas.

That was the impression I got when Gov. Ted Strickland kicked off his second Conversation on Education two weeks ago.

The first series of conversations, held over the summer, was tremendously informative. Teachers, school administrators, parents, students and others came to forums around the state to give useful opinions on how education can be improved in Ohio.

This new set of conversations focuses on school funding, the true center of Ohio's educational woes. Overreliance on local property taxes to fund schools has been ruled unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court, and yet no one can seem to come up with a better way.

Unfortunately, the first forum, held Nov. 20 at COSI, offered more problems than solutions.

Don't get me wrong -- some good ideas came out of it. And a very good point was made that the system of school funding needs to be easier for the average taxpayer to understand.

But those suggestions, while certainly valid, don't do anything to address the problems that plague Ohio's school funding system.

A few of the suggestions could help with funding problems. Leaning on federal funding when available is one; schools can take advantage of federal funding for -- to name two suggestions -- offering breakfast and using social workers, thus alleviating some of the burden on state and local funding sources.

Statewide all-day kindergarten was brought up as a way to help prevent problems down the line that will raise costs, such as incarceration. And the idea of determining the cost of a high-quality education would provide an enormously useful tool, even if it is something of a lofty goal.

But the suggestion that has been made time and time again is that the state should pay a greater share than the 52 percent it pays now, so it does not dump 48 percent of the responsibility on local taxes, mainly property taxes.

The question of where the state gets that money is the one that needs to be answered, and there wasn't a reliable answer in the offing at the forum.

Maybe the issue is the audience. A crowd gathered primarily from the education community was valuable for the previous forums because that crowd is best suited to suggest ways to improve education.

But is that the right crowd to determine how the state should adjust its budget to pump more money into the schools? How are they to determine which non-educational areas, if any, should be adjusted?

To be fair, the Nov. 20 forum isn't the last the governor will hold. More are scheduled for this month, and there will be time to revise and streamline the process to get some good suggestions for fixing the problems.

And I'm well aware that Strickland has on his staff people who are well equipped to dig into the budgeting process and find areas where changes can be made.

But these forums aren't as constructive as they need to be. Suggestions for improving education help, but we also have to figure out how to pay for it.

If the governor wants well-reasoned opinions on the budget, he may be better off inviting budget experts rather than education experts to his "conversations."




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