COLUMBUS, Ohio — Public school leaders across the state are continuing to fight for more funding in the next state budget.

The Ohio 8 is a group that’s made up of Ohio’s eight urban school districts–converging on Columbus on Friday–to push back on the Governor’s budget proposal they say isn’t supporting students.

Lois Carlson isn’t just the state president of the Ohio Association of Public Shool Employees, she’s also the grandmother of students in two different districts.

“I have the honor to represent almost 34,000 classified employees across the state of Ohio,” Carlson said. “I currently have two [grandchildren] still in public education…the money is stretched so thin, so all kids in Columbus City Schools don’t have the same opportunities.”

While Carlson said the lack of money is a huge problem, she also stressed the problem of too few bus drivers and how more money can always help those problems.

She said it wasn’t the only solution, but it may be one of them.

Superintendent of Columbus City Schools Angela Chapman said—if this budget bill is successful—they will lose more than $45 million dollars in state funding, and she said the timing couldn’t be worse.

On top of it, she said about a year ago the community passed an operating levy of $38 million a year in funding. If they lose $45 million, she said it would wipe out that levy.

“This comes at a really critical time for us because, as a district, our enrollment has increased. We have 47,000 students with the increase of over 2,000 students,” Chapman said. “This is about supporting children so $45 million in cuts that’s $45 million of fewer resources that we will be able to use to support the classroom.”

But Gov. Mike DeWine said those local tax levies are one of the reasons that districts might see their funding decrease and the other: declining enrollment.

“Our real focus in Ohio needs to be on education,” DeWine said. “We’re making some real progress. We’re using the science of reading. We’re starting to see our numbers get better with our kids, but we have a way to go.”

School leaders said they’re concerned about other provisions as well.

Two other problems school leaders touched on had to do with school facilities and the risk of losing some buildings. One of those at-risk buildings is Columbus Downtown High School, where they held the reception.

In House Bill 96, which is more than 4,000 pages long, Toledo Federation of Teachers President Kevin Dalton said in the budget there’s another provision that could impact teacher placement.

“As a former first grade teacher you would not want me teaching 11th grade algebra, geometry, and you certainly would not want a high school social studies teacher trying to work with first grade students,” Dalton said. “Because there’s two sentences to the provision. The one says the superintendent is authorized to make decisions and place educators in the best interest of the students and then the other piece of that provision, as far as I know, it also says the superintendent is prohibited from using seniority or continuing contract status to make those decisions."

Several state representatives attended the reception, and school officials said they expect to keep the conversation going to see if they can find some solutions.

Dalton asked the governor what it would take to fully fund education "and embed practices and policies that are articulated by actual educators and not just legislators."

“Well, in our system, legislators are the ones we vote for, and they’re the ones who make the decisions about funding, and so we’re going to see what comes out,” DeWine said. “We have to see what they come up with. I have no idea at this point what their bill is going to look like.”