The wealthy need to pay their share toward fair school funding

This article originally appeared on Cleveland.com and is reprinted here with permission.

Ohioans know that by fully and fairly funding our public schools we can prepare our kids and our state for an uncertain future. It’s why we’ve fought for and won long-term changes to Ohio’s school funding formula and why communities all around the state are demanding that legislators finish the job of implementing the Fair School Funding Plan in the next state budget.

But some legislators are doing all they can to weaken our public schools and short-change the 1.6 million students they serve.

The vast majority of Ohio’s parents — nearly 90 percent — send their children to public schools. Those students’ right to an education is secured by the Ohio Constitution, which promises a thorough and efficient education for all.

For four years, Ohio policymakers have been advancing the Fair School Funding Plan, a funding formula designed to deliver on the Constitution’s promise. It was enacted with bipartisan support to finally address the disparities in education created by decades of funding local schools primarily through local property tax revenue.

The plan came about thanks to a Sheridan High School freshman named Nathan DeRolph, 550 school districts, a lawsuit and about three decades of parent, student, teacher, administrator and community advocacy.

The formula is based on the actual cost of educating a child, including inputs for things like the number of kids who are economically disadvantaged, who have special needs, are English language learners or are gifted. It compares those costs to the district’s capacity to generate school funding through the local property tax base. Districts with less wealth get a boost from state general revenue funds.

The plan has been phased in over the last two state budget cycles. It’s now up to the current General Assembly to enact the final phase.

When the plan is fully implemented with accurate and up-to-date cost inputs, Ohio’s public school students will be attending schools finally funded to provide them with a thorough education — regardless of their ZIP code — and there will be a mechanism in place to offset over-reliance on property taxes.

Some politicians are poised to erode all of this progress by failing to adequately fund the formula and update the costs. Politicians are well versed in pleading poverty to cut publicly popular spending, but Ohioans should not be misled. Ohio has the revenue to do right by kids — we’d have much more if decades of tax cuts had not undermined communities to give big tax breaks to the wealthy.

Since 2005, legislators have cut about $12.8 billion a year in income tax revenue that could otherwise be used to meet the needs of Ohioans. These cuts mean less money for schools and shift costs to other kinds of taxes, which are not based on one’s ability to afford them.

For example, nearly every Ohioan — 99 percent of us — pays more on average in sales taxes, excise taxes and business taxes than in 2005.

The 1 percent who are on average paying less? They have an average annual income of $1,547,000.

The almost pathological focus of some legislators on eliminating the income tax is a big part of why providing a decent education to Ohio students is suddenly too high a price to pay.

Ohio has the resources, but legislators have to ensure that the wealthy pay their share.