Big election Tuesday

Our local public school district has run headlong into the school funding crunch, and has a large operating levy on the ballot Tuesday. It’s asking for a 7.3-mill continuing operating levy (meaning a tax increase of $7.34 for every thousand dollars of property value). The same levy failed by a narrow measure on the November ballot.

Now this is a huge operating levy request by Ohio standards – usually when schools ask for that much, they’re doing some construction. I’m not sure why they didn’t reduce their requested amount the second time around. Most levies of this size also require several attempts before passage and the demographics of our community includes a lot of retired property owners who are most reluctant to loosen their purse strings. Failure to pass the levy this time, according to levy committee materials, will result in reorganization of the elementary schools (and resulting loss of jobs), larger classes, elimination of extracurricular activities, loss of non-core curricula, and cessation of the school cable channel. The November loss at the polls already resulted in the loss of high school busing. So, since January, we’ve been driving our foreign exchange student the six miles to and from school every morning and afternoon.

We’ve been pleased, overall, with the district’s performance. District schools are consistently ranked in the upper echelons of Ohio institutions. We voted for the levy last time and will vote for it again this time.

I hope it passes, because if it does not it will have some certain and other potential impacts on our family.

First, if the levy does not pass, we will not host an exchange student next year – the first time since 1998. The transportation cost ($30-$35 a week) and workload will make hosting impractical. Also, we will have to consider home schooling and/or private school for our children, ages 12 and 11. This last option would be an additional slap in the face of the schools, which lose $6,000 state funding for each child leaving enrollment.

The fine schools were one of the reasons we decided to locate in this community. Impoverished schools will certainly affect the community’s currently desirable status and thereby depress property values.

Ohio’s funding system is unfair: the neighboring Perry Local School District has very low taxes, but a nearly unlimited budget thanks to the property tax windfall it receives from the Perry Nuclear Power Plant. I think I still prefer local decision on school funding to turning all money over to the state to be divided evenly – this allows individual communities to decide how much of a priority they place on education.

In our community, I hope it’s priority number one.