Prepared Text for Board Meeting (HB1 thoughts)
Marc A. Schare
Work -
Folks, I’m sure that we
all know the status of the
Here are my current
thoughts on the subject.
First, according to
published news reports, both the House plan and the Senate plan are out of
balance by as much as 2 billion dollars, this despite the Senate cutting about
a Billion dollars from the house budget. A billion dollars is a big number and
the conference committee will either have to make those cuts or maintain the
rosy revenue projections that led to the creation of the budget in the first
place and then make the cuts next year when the revenues do not materialize. A
third possibility is a general tax increase which, according to Democrats and
Republicans alike is unlikely to happen.
Because of this, I see
little value in a debate between fictitious budget “A” and fictitious budget
“B”, nor do I see us as being able to materially influence the outcome of the
conference so unless other board members have a desire to get into the details
of HB1 or the Evidence Based Model, I’m content to leave it alone for this
evening, although I have to make one comment.
I’m very disappointed with
the EBM and how this entire process has been politicized, and needlessly so.
When I look at the EBM, I see a state willing to fund nurses we may never be
required to hire, I see a state willing to fund class sizes we may never be
required to implement, I see a state willing to fund counselors that we may or
may not need and
I see carte blanche being given to the State Department of Education to potentially
implement a whole raft of unfunded mandates. Even if you buy into the EBM, the bill
institutes the Educational
Challenge Factor to make sure that rich
suburban school districts don’t benefit “too much” under the model and the fact
that mandates may be dependent on external factors which calls into question
the evidence behind the model.
For their part, the Ohio
Senate did much of what we asked them to do, including the permanent
reimbursement of tangible personal property taxes and the maintenance of
several issues regarding teacher professionalization. The problem is, I no more
believe that this can be fully funded than I do that the Governor’s plan will
be fully funded and I think both sides are playing politics in a
game that school districts can’t afford to lose.
Here is what I think needs
to happen. We need to divorce the EBM from the funding model. Odden testified that it was possible to implement his model
using a per pupil funding system. If an organizational-centric system is best
for