School levies becoming a substitute for reform in Ohio

Every election season, the same scenario plays out across Ohio: school districts put levies on the ballot, and taxpayers are told to vote yes or risk “losing our schools.” For residents across the Miami Valley, I have to ask: are repeated levies really the solution, or just a band-aid for a broken system?

As someone who has watched local politics and public policy closely for decades, I promise you: relying on levies to fund schools has become the default, not the exception. Schools are in a pickle since the Ohio Supreme Court in the DeRolph decisions declared Ohio’s school-funding system unconstitutional and set a long-running mandate for reform. However, there is an argument schools have a spending issue on items not core to its mission, such as a grand football stadium and performing art centers rivaling the private sector or high administrative costs versus in the classroom spending.

The problem is structural. Ohio’s school funding formula ties a significant portion of education costs to local property taxes, creating a patchwork system where wealthy areas can often raise funds more easily, while middle-class and less affluent areas struggle. For good reason, recent changes at the state level have restricted the types of levies districts can even put on the ballot, eliminating emergency and substitute levies many districts relied on.

This column first published in the Dayton Daily News, where Rob Scott is a weekly opinion page contributor. See the rest of it here.