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?

Corporate Ed Reform a big election loser

Corporate education reformers lost big on election night in a number of states with high profile issues and races affecting public education. In no particular order, here's what went down

Florida voters defeated a measure that would have allowed the use of public funds for religious school tuition, effectively turning back an effort that was expected to lead to a state-wide voucher program. It only garnered 44% of the vote.

In Indiana, The Washington Post reports

Indiana voters tossed out controversial state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and elected veteran teacher Glenda Ritz in his place, the Indianapolis Star reported.

The vote has resonance beyond Indiana because Bennett was a leader of the national market-driven school reform movement who pushed through a statewide voucher program and took other steps that critics said amounted to the privatization of public education.

Idaho voters voters

• Rejected plans to mandate students to take online courses and for the state to spend $180 million on laptops - a boon for the profiteers, an economic disaster for districts.
• Rejected merit pay for teachers that is linked to student standardized test scores
• Opposed limits on the collective bargaining rights for teachers.

In California, voters approved Prop 30, which calls for a $6-billion-a-year tax increase, in part to fund public education. They also rejected Prop 32, the third attempt in 14 years to prevent unions, which represent 2.5 million workers in California, from using annual dues payments to contribute to state and local candidates or campaigns for ballot measures.

The Washington Post Reports, In Bridgeport, Conn.

voters rejected an expensive effort by the mayor and his supporters in the corporate world to win mayoral control over the Board of Education. Voters retained the right to elect their own school board representatives.

Corporate education reformers and union busters spent a lot of money on issues and candidates in election 2012 and left with a lot of heavy losses.

Referendum is Go for Launch

The Secretary of State, John Husted, has certified that enough valid signatures have been collected to allow the full repeal effort of SB5 to begin. The Dispatch via Twitter informs us that "SoS Husted says 2,506 of 2,835 valid (88 percent)".

Furthermore the Attorney General, Mike DeWine, has certified the short referendum language. The long referendum language was rejected as being too long.

The effort to collect signatures to place the SB5 repeal on the ballot is now clear to take place.