OHIO — Hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and disruptions to learning as a result of COVID-19 has school districts across the state trying to figure out how they’re going to weather the storm. As Governor DeWine noted yesterday, it’s raining. The state has to make up for three-quarters of a billion dollars lost since the pandemic struck.
- Medicaid cuts draw new concerns for the health of families, student learning environments and learning overall
- Wealthy and low-poverty districts in suburban areas received the steepest percentage of cuts to their budgets
- Educators fear more cuts may be coming when year two of the biennium budget begins in July
In a matter of minutes, public school districts across Ohio learned they’d see less money. That’s money to educate Ohio’s children in grades K-12.
Marlon Styles, superintendent of Middletown City Schools said, “That hurts also. This impacts kids. It impacts their ability to make their dreams come true.”
It remains to be seen what the exact impact will be as districts found out less than 24 hours ago exactly how much they’ll lose.
For Ohio’s eight largest public school districts, losses ranged from just under one million dollars to over nine million dollars in Columbus City Schools.
Youngstown City School District
$862,222
Canton City School District
$893, 684
Dayton Public Schools
$2,007,169
Akron Public Schools
$3,508,136
Toledo Public Schools
$3,610,362
Cleveland Municipal School District
$5,630,967
Cincinnati Public Schools
$8,720,168
Columbus City Schools
$9,168,987
Although wealthy and low-poverty districts in suburban areas received the steepest percentage of cuts to their budgets, it’s clear that all districts could be in a tighter place than before.
“We have to remember that the funding foundation formula was already frozen for the year anyway. So, districts were already struggling to get by,” said Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper.
K-12 education makes up one of the largest parts of the state’s budget. That's about $10 billion.
Cropper suspects more cuts may be coming when year two of the biennium budget begins in July.
“We anticipate there’s gonna have to be more cuts made to year two. And the fear is, how much of that is going to come from education whether it’s K-12 or higher ed,” Cropper said.
Although money for social emotional needs remains untouched for now, there are concerns that less medicaid services, which typically help low income families, will have a negative impact. That’s because cuts to services could negatively affect family health, learning environments that have already been disrupted, and learning overall.
“Taking these cuts at a period of time when children actually need more just doubles the impact,” said Cropper.
Districts like Middletown recently cut dollars from their budget to protect the educational experience, but now they may have to look at a second round of cuts. That's unless money from the CARES Act offsets the loss or they’re able to pull money from their fund balance to make up for cuts.
At the end of the day, OFT President Melissa Cropper said Ohio needs to examine its values around public education.
“Public schools have been there and now the state needs to be there for our public schools and give then them the funds they need rather than siphoning off funds to private schools,” she said.
A detailed outline of all of the cuts are expected to be released next Monday giving districts across the state a better idea of how the cuts will impact everyone.
Click to see a full list of reductions for each school district in the state.