Toledo Blade: Green Light Given to School Funding Ballot Petitions

Toledo Blade, February 7, 2007

Ohio petition drive OK'd for proposed constitutional amendment for school funding

By JIM PROVANCE BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Ballot Board this morning gave backers of a proposed constitutional amendment to dramatically change how the state funds education the green light to begin gathering signatures to put the question to voters on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Despite debate over whether protections against budget cuts for the state’s local government fund, colleges, and universities should have been spun off into a separate ballot question, the five-member, Democrat majority board voted unanimously to send the petitions into the streets as a single, lengthy issue.

“Let’s not mistake length for meaning more than one amendment,” said Don McTigue, attorney for the Campaign for Ohio’s Future, a coalition of teachers’ unions, school boards, administrators, and parents pushing the amendment. He argued against dividing the question into two constitutional amendments, saying the protections for local governments and higher education are directly related to K-12 education.

The coalition plans to organize at the school district level to rally volunteers to gather more than 402,000 signatures of registered voters to put the proposal on the ballot.

If approved, the amendment would empower the State Board of Education to decide what constitutes a “high-quality education” and to set a per-pupil price tag for that education.

The state would assume that a school district levies 20 mills in property taxes, and the General Assembly would be obligated to fund the difference between what those mills generate and the state board’s per-pupil price tag.

The amendment does not mandate that districts roll back local property taxes, nor does it suggest where the state would find its share of the bill.