If You Thought Mike DeWine Hated Public School Kids, Wait'll You Meet Matt Huffman
Ohio House budget eliminates hope of finally fixing Ohio's broken school funding system while literally robbing billions school districts have responsibly saved.
Ok. Mike DeWine. I’m sorry. There’s an Ohio politician that hates public school kids more than you.
Meet Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman.
By way of background, I served with Matt Huffman 19 years ago. He was not this asshole when I knew him. He was thoughtful. He asked me questions about school funding. He even was a little bit funny.
But Darth Vader for Ohio’s public school kids? Nope. Didn’t see that one coming.
In his version of Ohio’s biennial state budget, Huffman eliminated the Fair School Funding Plan — a bipartisan plan that was developed by state Rep. John Patterson and Huffman’s predecessor in his current House Seat and a former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Robert Cupp. The plan, which was developed over years of work with several school funding experts and public school treasurers, superintendents and other professionals, attempted to figure out how much students needed, then committed the state to funding that need over 3 consecutive biennial budgets.
This budget was to be the last in that phase in. The Ohio General Assembly needed $600 million more to meet the needs of kids, as calculated in 2021 ($800 million if you updated it using newer figures).
Huffman ended up being about $350 million short. He’s closer than DeWine was, but here’s the kicker.
Instead of playing funding games and at least claiming to fully implement (if not fund) the Fair School Funding Plan as DeWine did, Huffman just killed it off. He’s doing what Gov. John Kasich did when he killed the Evidence-Based Model of school funding in 2011 — setting up a “bridge” formula based on giving arbitrary increases to the last calculated, partially phased-in amount the formula spit out this school year.
Yes. That’s residual budgeting. And yes. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that methodology unconstitutional. Four. Fucking. Times.
I’m so sick of writing the same shit every year. But here we are.
And even though he’s chipping in more overall state funding than DeWine did (nearly 1/2 of which is going to wealthier suburban districts, with nearly 20% going just to Columbus), his elimination of the formula is far, far more destructive than any minor benefit those slight bumps provide1.
I’ve always argued that getting a formula is better than just money. Why?
Because school funding, in the absence of a formula, is based on politicians’ whimsy, not student need.
Huffman claims that the Fair School Funding Plan is unsustainable. Because he doesn’t want to come up with the last $600-$800 million to pay for it.
You want to know what he does want to pay for that he says is sustainable? Unaccountable private school tuition subsidies.
Wanna guess how much more Ohio has spent subsidizing wealthy adults’ private school tuitions since the 2021-2022 school year, once you include the boosts included in this year’s budget?
$807 million
That’s right.
Nearly the exact amount the re-calculated, most expensive Fair School Funding Plan costs.
So Huffman finds spending another $807 million — none of which is subject to public audit — to subsidize wealthy parents’ private school tuitions sustainable. But slightly less than that same amount for public school kids?
Fuck ‘em.
Hell, he could have just paid the cheaper, older $600 million and still given the remaining $207 million to wealthy private school parents as a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy. I know. It’s not even a 50% increase for vouchers.
But, you know.
It’s just so blaringly obvious. Huffman doesn’t give a shit about your kids. All he cares about is his rich buddies and how to get them richer.
It’s as simple as that.
What an asshole.
But wait. It gets worse. Because now, instead of addressing the property tax crisis in this state with real ideas, what’s Huffman proposing? Taking all money away from school districts who’ve saved more than 25% of their general revenue spend.
That’s right. He wants to leave every school district in this state enough money to pay for 3 months of operations.
All for a $4.6 billion, on-time property tax give back that does nothing to solve the long-term issues and leaves Ohio school districts with no more than 3 months of operating revenue in their rainy day funds. All while the state abandons its efforts to actually figure out what districts need from the state to fund its educational programming, therefore eliminating all state funding stability.
Fiscal responsibility indeed.
So that means that 526 of Ohio’s 609 school districts will now need to return that money and be nearly completely dependent on and subservient to this guy.
Here’s the list of types of districts and which ones have to give back the most money.
And here are the districts that get hammered the worst.
Once again, Ohio’s lawmakers screw Ohio’s public school kids. All so their rich buddies can get their private school tuition subsidized by our tax dollars.
Just disgusting.
Because there are only 8 major urban districts and Columbus had about 1/5 of all the new money in the House budget, I excluded them from the Major Urban average.