RH Jones: Understanding school budgets 101

From RH Jones, October 7, 2007

To all:

Every Ohio (OH) public school board member and every elected OH politician of both parties needs to understand school financing. School district budgets one fund for professional staff that is inclusive of all benefits including both salary and fringes. The STRS of OH Retiree Health Care (HC) is part of the fringe benefits. Both the employer/employee contributions to the STRS are part of that one benefit package.

The various OH professional education organizations are in agreement that the active OH educator wants HC during their retired years. The Ohio Revised Code (ORC) does not currently require HC for retired educators. HB 315 honorably seeks to change that. It is absolutely vital for OH through its public school districts to provide the funding.

As best as I can recall, a few years back, K. Fluke, PhD. and I researched the ORC in two prestigious OH law books. We found that the STRS board had the power to raise employer/employee rates, if they found a need! We felt the need was there and went public with our findings. Note: I had also found the same ORC statement on the Ohio ORC computer Web site. Fluke and I notified the STRS of that interpretation of the law. The STRS notified me a couple weeks later that our findings were not valid. I then noticed that the statement in the ORC “official” Web site had mysteriously disappeared! And not being lawyers, Fluke and I had no funds for legal help on this. Around that time the Concerned Ohio Retired Teacher (CORE) was being formed with the hope of raising enough dollars to get legal action on our retired teacher problems. The money could never be raised. However, public awareness was raised. Those were terrible political times. The CORE got busy to help change that. Hopefully, those terrible times are now over.

Harmoniously, both major Ohio political parties have now come together to seek a solution to part of our retired teacher problems. They have worked together to introduce HB 315. Also, the various active and retired professional educator groups came into harmony as well. This retired teacher will be anxiously waiting the results of this coming together. A few extreme right wing critics still remain selfishly mean spirited. But, hopefully, that will change too.

The STRS OH is the oldest public servant retirement system in the state. Ladies and gentlemen of vision, of a generation long passed, founded it. And, also, real Ohio political statesmen created the ORC to guide it. We STRS members can only look forward to real ladies and gentlemen, of the present, willing and able to have statesmanship equal to those of the past and to do the right thing: enact HB 315!

Robert Hudson Jones, MSE + plus 27-graduate hrs. & a retired STRS member