Teachers Digging Into Own Pockets to tune of $1.3 billion

Via

Roughly half the amount that the nation's public school teachers are spending on educational products is being covered with their own money, a new nationwide survey shows.

All told, teachers spent about $3.2 billion on various types of supplies and materials during the 2012-13 academic year, according to the survey, released recently by the National School Supply and Equipment Association. Half that total amount, $1.6 billion, came out of educators' own pockets.

The per-teacher breakdown is as follows: The average educator forked out about $198 of their own money on instructional materials, $149 on school supplies, and $139 on other classroom materials, for a total of $485 last academic year, according to the survey.

In total, nearly all teachers—99.5 percent—reported digging into their own pockets to cover the costs on classroom supplies or materials, according to the association. The portion of teachers doing so appears to have risen over time.

The report, "The 2010 NSSEA Retail Market Awareness Study," was based on a survey of 308 K-12 teachers, conducted by Perry Research Professionals.

Budget conference committee take backward steps

If one had hoped that the budget conference committee would take the Governor, House and Senate education policy plans and blend them into a better product, those hopes were dashed yesterday.

The budget continues to disinvest in Ohio's public education system to the tune of $532.7 million compared to 2010-2011 funding levels. To add further insult to that injury, in order to pass along income tax cuts to Ohio's wealthiest citizens, the GOP controlled legislature is also eliminating the 12.5% property tax rollback. A homeowner would face paying an additional $4.38 per mill for every $100,000 in taxable property value on new levies - making those levies a tougher sell for struggling schools.

In other areas of education policy, the conference committee failed too. The Senate had proposed to reduce the weight of a teachers evaluation using value-added from 50% to 35%. However, the conference committee reversed that policy improvement leaving the absurd over-reliance of value-add in place at 50%. Furthermore, the Senate had proposed eliminating the scores from teachers evaluations of students who were unexcused absent for 30 days or more. This would have been down from the current law of 60 days. The Conference committee reset that to an objectionable 45 days. For reference, Ohio Revised Code states that a student is chronically truant after only 15 days of unexcused absence - so why any teacher should be evaluated based on chronically truant students can only be explained by the legislature wanting to be punitive towards educators.

According to Gongwer

Conferees did adopt some last minute tweaks to the school funding that Republicans said would steer some additional money to poorer urban and rural districts.

One amendment would shift some funding from the K-3 literacy fund for all schools to economically disadvantaged districts and charter schools, according to House Republican policy aide Colleen Grady. However, the revision would not significantly alter the bottom line on K-12 spending.

So in order to more adequately fund rural school districts the legislature decided not to add more money to the put but to shift money from their own 3rd grade reading guarantee. This isn't education policy, it is madness.

Other notable changes

• Revise the enrollment count for funding traditional school districts by switching to an annualized processed that would be updated three times a year starting in 2015.
• Remove a funding guarantee for charter schools rated "excellent" for three years consecutively.
• Subject private school students to state testing requirements if more than 65% of the population uses state vouchers, while allowing pupils not on scholarships to opt out of the exams.
• Specify that homeschooled children and students moving into Ohio could obtain for EdChoice vouchers if they live in an eligible school district.
• Ensure that students attending a STEM school can participate in extracurricular activities in their resident schools.
• Create an advisory committee to guide distribution of the Straight A grant program funds and advise the governing board.
• Cap Straight A fund awards at $5 million for a single grantee and $15 million for a consortium, while allowing the Controlling Board to approve higher amounts.

Budget boosts private & charter schools at the expense of public schools

Innovation Ohio has taken a close look at the public education implications of the budget bill making its way through the legislature

In particular, we find that HB 59:

• sends more money to charters, regardless of performance
• lowers standards for charter schools, exempting them from accountability expected of Ohio’s traditional public schools
• continues the push to privatize our public schools by union-busting and outsourcing
• sends more taxpayer money to fund private schools, and
• forces traditional schools to do more with less

They further found that the senate budget

• Cut 3 in 4 school districts compared to 2010-2011 funding levels, to the tune of $532.7 million.
• Cut 1 in 4 school districts compared to 2012-2013 funding levels.
• Continued the need for an unprecedented $1.3 billion in new school levies for operations that have appeared on local ballots since Kasich took office, and causing 82 percent of school districts to cut staff positions last year.

You can download their report, here.

Why such inequity? Some reason it is because for-profit charter school operators such as David Brennan and William Lager are such huge contributors to the very politicians making these inequitable decisions

Brennan and Lager are the top individual contributors to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate (or close to it) . And they're no slouches when it comes to Gov. John Kasich either. They've given nearly $1 million to politicians since 2008.

It should come as little surprise then, that even though Brennan and Lager operate some of the worst charter schools in the state, they are receiving some of the largest increases in state spending - even more than some of their higher performing charter school peers.

Rejected Kasich formula coming back?

The Ohio Senate revealed its version of the Budget, and it contained a number of changes to education policy proposals proposed by the Governor and the House. What it didn't contain was a school funding formula, for that we are told we will have to wait another week. A familiar story.

Based upon reporting, there should be some serious cause for concern. The Toledo Blade reports

A huge chunk still missing from the budget is how the chamber plans to deal with K-12 schools, preventing lawmakers from putting a total price tag on the two-year spending plan for the moment. Talks continue, but Mr. Faber predicted that the final product is likely to be closer to what Mr. Kasich initially proposed than what the House put forth.

Mr. Kasich’s school funding plans, particularly his promise that more money would flow to poorer schools, were initially greeted with optimism by school superintendents across the state. But that mood quickly soured when the administration released numbers showing that some 60 percent of school districts would see no funding increases while some wealthier, fast-growing, suburban districts were in line for large increases.

The House, in turned, capped the growth in subsidies to those suburban schools, resulting in more districts being in line for increases, including Toledo Public Schools. Mr. Faber would not speculate what the Senate’s total K-12 pot of funding would be larger or smaller than in the House version.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a reaction

Senate Minority Leader Eric Kearney, D-North Avondale, said the small business tax cut wouldn’t provide business owners with enough money to create new jobs. He also lamented the budget’s lack of additional funding for local governments and schools.

“Our schools and local communities have suffered drastic cuts since Governor Kasich took office and today’s amendments by Senate Republicans to (the budget bill) did nothing to change that,” he said in a statement. “That’s not good news for local taxpayers who’ve been forced to pick up the slack from state funding cuts by voting for more local levies.”

Senate Republicans said they won’t have education funding numbers until next week, when they plan to reveal their final K-12 funding plan.

The Governor promised that poor districts would receive more, which should not have been a difficult task after he cut education funding by $1.8 billion in his last budget. But even that promise turned out to be empty as almost 400 school districts were set to receive flat funding. The House promised to fix the Governor's mess, and attempted to do so by returning to the Taft era building blocks formula - only they cut school funding by a further $200 million in the process. Now the Ohio Senate wants to return to the Governor's rejected formula. As we predicted, we have a school funding disaster on our hands, unless the Senate is also going to attach significant amounts of additional money to the plan to make it workable.

School administrators were not kind about the Governor's funding formula the first go-around, and here's the graph to demonstrate why

Will Ohio's media be bamboozled a third time by Republican legislators?

Adequately funding my school

JTF recently recieved this essay from Worthington City Schools senior, Hassan Mizra.

Education helps broaden the minds of young individuals to help them achieve success in the future. All across America students go to school to learn and prepare for their futures. Just imagine the students walking into a classroom with new desks with four stable legs, new chairs that aren’t cracked or missing parts and sitting down to their personal laptop provided by the school. This sounds like a school that most parents would want their children to attend. Wouldn’t it be great if all schools had all these? Wouldn’t it be fascinating if all students were able to partake in an improved quality of education for every school?

The state's previous budget cut public school funding by $1.8 billion, which ultimately hurt Ohio's public education system. Ohio Governor John Kasich introduced a new state budget, which proposed a reform of the school funding formula. The new budget promised more money to the less funded school districts, but the promise proved empty. But the Governor, through the Republican dominated legislature, is doing the exact opposite. They are continuing to underfund public schools while increase funding to charter schools and further pushing public education into the hands of private corporations.

For the 2011-12 school year, Worthington Schools received $54,952,536 all total funds, and Olentangy Local Schools received $50,863,323. These two districts are 2 of the best in central Ohio, where they benefit from higher than typical property valuations. An essential aspect for each of these districts' high ratings is because they receive the necessary funding that a public school district should have.

However, the underfunding of public schools in Ohio is an enormous issue that affects many people, especially students. There is a need to re-work the current formula used by Ohio to determine how school funds are disbursed and also to increase public support for education funding. Limited funds for public schools have primarily affected the poor and have put them at a disadvantage in getting a quality education. Whitehall, generally speaking, has a lower property valuation. The schools in Whitehall do not receive the sufficient funding they deserve as a public school district.

Unequal funding throughout the state demonstrates the unfairness some school districts face. Is it fair that schools that reside in low property valuation areas don’t have the necessities to educate their youth?

The reason that some schools can't do things like buy computers and maintain their buildings to begin with is because the school funding system is so ineffective. The US government pays only 7% of all school money, and the rest is up to the state and the local tax-payers. Whatever money the state won't pay is paid as school income tax or property taxes, which are higher or lower depending on how much the property is worth, and the incomes of the districts residents. But this means that schools in poor neighborhoods get little money while wealthy schools get nearly all they need.

The Governor needs to start funding public education fairly and adequately. According to the Ohio Association of Independent Schools (OAIS) the vast majority Ohio students, roughly 1.85 million attend public schools, so it would make sense for the Governor to turn his attention towards public education. Despite whether a child's parents are wealthy or poor, it is in everyone's interest to guarantee that America's future generations are both highly skilled and well educated.

Money and politics

If the Tea Party are truly concerned about the influence of money in politics, then the "work place freedom" that is needed, is the freedom from corporations buying politicians and elections. This graph from opensecrets.org amply demonstrates how asymetric the situation is

Corporate political donations far outstrip any other kind, including labor organizations, and since the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision to allow even greater freedom for corporations to buy elections and politicians, that gap is growing significantly.