'Fantasy': Ohio House speaker denounces current spending on public schools

Ohio House Republican leadership is doubling down on their threat to cut public school spending, with House Speaker Matt Huffman calling the continuation of the current Fair School Funding Plan a “fantasy” and eyeing $650 million in cuts.

Ohio’s history with school funding isn’t the brightest. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the way the state funds schools is unconstitutional, relying too much on property taxes.

Throughout the next three decades, lawmakers went back and forth on policy in an attempt to fix the unconstitutionality. The Ohio Education Association, as well as lawmakers on each side of the aisle, have deemed that it has been unconstitutional since then. However, some Republicans argue that because they are no longer using the struck-down policy, and since nothing else has been deemed “unconstitutional” in court, by definition, it can’t be considered unconstitutional.

Either way, there has been a bipartisan effort for years to fix the funding system.

House Bill 1, introduced by state Reps. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Cleveland) and Jamie Callender (R-Concord), in 2021, required $333 million additional dollars a year for K-12 education funding — or about $2 billion overall in the course of three two-year budget cycles. It is called the Cupp-Paterson Fair School Funding Plan.

Their bill mirrored the policy that passed the House but not the Senate in the General Assembly prior, which was created by former Speaker Bob Cupp (R-Lima) and former state Rep. John Patterson (D-Jefferson). House Bill 1 was finally passed and signed into law.

The rollout was supposed to take six years and is meant to change how public dollars are provided to K-12 schools. It would give additional support to local districts so they can rely less on property taxes.

The first two years were partially fully funded, the second two years were fully funded, and there are just two years left to go.

In early January, comments made by new House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) angered viewers, readers, parents, and education leaders across the state.

“I don’t think there is a third phase to Cupp-Patterson,” Huffman told reporters. “As to the expectation that those things are gonna go in… I guess the clear statement I can say is I think those increases in spending are unsustainable.”

The G.A. from four years ago shouldn’t be able to “bind” what the future lawmakers can do, he said.

We did a follow-up story after half a dozen GOP legislators personally reached out, vowing to protect K-12 education.

Those six, and at least 15 others we have spoken to in recent weeks, say that one of their main priorities is supporting public schools.

This comes as Gov. Mike DeWine would not commit to supporting the current bipartisan funding formula, saying that “difficult choices” will need to be made.

Doubling down

Warrensville Heights City Schools has 2,000 students, and Superintendent Donald Jolly said a fourth of them have special needs.

The current school funding formula provides financial support for them, with the district spending money to help each student succeed, Jolly said.

“We get a lot of support with reading intervention and special needs students and so forth,” the superintendent said.

But he said Huffman will force them to cut reading and math intervention specialists, among other beneficial programs.

The speaker wants to slash at least $650 million in public education spending in this General Assembly’s budget.

On Tuesday, we brought the topic back up to Huffman, including the backlash he has faced.

“The implementing of the Cupp-Patterson plan that many believers say — fait accompli — that we decided four years ago, that in this budget we’re going to do that, in my estimation, is a fantasy,” the speaker said.

Huffman explained that this year’s budget is going to have significantly less money due to the federal COVID dollars drying up. And for him, public education is on the chopping block.

“What is the least expensive, acceptable educational product for the taxpayer?” Huffman asked rhetorically. “If someone says they’re willing to take a $7,000 scholarship voucher and go to a private school rather than going to the school that… on average in the state, it’s about $15,000 — that’s better for the taxpayers.”

Huffman is referencing the average operating expenditures per pupil, according to the Legislative Service Commission.

For the speaker, the choice that accomplishes his question is the private school voucher system. Huffman is a champion of private school vouchers, with the state spending roughly $1 billion in public money to send kids to private, for-profit, and religious schools.

Huffman and many GOP politicians believe spending that much on private school vouchers is necessary in order to have the money “follow the child” or have the students avoid poor-performing public schools.

“There’s no educational system where one size fits all works for everyone,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said during a press conference, addressing different types of schools.

But for public schools, the private school voucher program is siphoning money from them, and the voucher system doesn’t have a record to show for transparency.

“You would think with the $1 billion in public investment, we’d be very concerned about what exactly that’s going to,” Parma City School Superintendent Charles Smialek said. “And yet we don’t have any type of report that can generate that type of information for us.”

Public schools are held to higher standards than private schools, Smialek said.

We questioned Huffman on the lack of transparency with that state money.

“Talking about public education spending and spending it wisely,” this reporter said, getting cut off.

“Ish,” Huffman interrupted.

“We don’t know how the vouchers are being spent,” this reporter continued. “Should we have more accountability when it comes to that?”

“Yeah, I think there is a lot of accountability,” he responded. “Of course, there’s the private accountability — it’s the parents and the folks who go there.”

He added that the accountability also comes because, he claimed, vouchers are inexpensive in comparison to the per-pupil amount for public schools.

“One accountability measure is [if] they’re educating this Ohio child, if the cost of the voucher is $7,000… that accountability is it’s less expensive,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody who’s going to question that.”

He gave an example of how the state would know if Bishop Hartley, a Columbus Catholic school, is “doing the things that they want to do.”

“Well, there are lots of folks who are sending their kids to Bishop Hartley, or Temple Christian in Lima, or places like that,” he continued.

There are also a lot of people sending kids to public school — the vast majority of students in the state — Smialek argued.

“We are extremely fiscally responsible and we’re open to anyone’s inspection,” he said. “If you actually walk through our halls and you actually look at our books, what exactly would you cut? What exactly are we doing that doesn’t pass muster with our community?”

However, Huffman did add that it would be “appropriate” to have conversations about some form of accountability aspect for voucher programs.

Everyone can see how public schools spend money, especially for special needs programs. Jolly added that these are kids that many private schools can’t accommodate.

“We can’t say you don’t fit, go to another school,” he said, saying he would never do that to a child and that their district supports all learners.

Despite the immense backlash, the response to Huffman isn’t changing his mind.

“If people are upset about it, they still need to address the facts,” the speaker said. “I think the current system, especially if we did the third part of what some people are calling the plan, is really unsustainable.”

The animosity between how public schools and voucher-recipient schools function is palpable.

“When you have a lawmaker that’s basically marketing for them, marketing for those vouchers — of course, people who have not done this research will follow,” Jolly said.

The superintendents hope that lawmakers will actually fight against Huffman’s plan.

“It’s a marketing scheme that exists — as public schools have gotten a black eye across the board,” Jolly said.

This article was originally publishedon News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.

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