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RURAL SCHOOLS &
FAIR SCHOOL FUNDING

🍎 Rural public schools are more than classrooms, they’re the heart of our communities. 🎓

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🏫 Public schools are an essential part of any thriving community, and that’s especially true in rural communities, where schools are the central hub in civic life. 


🏉 From Friday night football games to school plays and community festivals, our schools connect neighbors across generations. They preserve our local heritage and traditions, strengthening the fabric of rural life and giving kids a reason to stay and invest in their hometowns. 

Local schools are major employers in our communities, too, and help sustain small-town economies by attracting families and supporting local businesses.

🏛️ But these social and economic lifelines are threatened by the budget bill currently being considered in the Ohio Statehouse. 


✂️ Lawmakers in the Ohio House already passed a bill that would gut the Fair School Funding Plan, the bipartisan approach to school funding that works by taking the actual cost of educating kids and splitting it between the state and local communities according to how much those local communities can afford. 


 ⚖️ Now it’s the Ohio Senate’s turn to decide how to fund our schools and how much they’ll get. The Fair School Funding Plan offers a real solution, but we need to fight for it.

📣 On May 29, we held a rally on the Statehouse steps with the Ohio Farmers Union to show our support for rural schools, public education, and a fully funded Fair School Funding Plan.

📊 After our inspiring speakers wrapped up, rally attendees

visited the offices of each of our 33 Ohio Senators to share

information about why the Fair School Funding Plan is vital

to the future of rural communities. And for the Senators of

13 of our most rural districts, we shared information about 

  • just how much funding their district would lose if our next 
    budget does not fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan,

  • the percentage of students in their district who attend
    public     schools, and

  • how much of the savings banked by their school districts 
    to cut down on levy frequency     the schools would have to
    give     back under a proposed budget amendment that would
    cap school     district cash reserves at 30%

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🚨We need your help! They've heard from us– now our Senators need to hear from you.🚨


🔽 Here's what Ohio's rural communities need from the Ohio Senate:

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  • ➡️ Include the Fair School Funding Plan in the state budget and complete the successful phase-in started four years ago: The Fair School Funding Plan because it

    • was passed and implemented with bipartisan support to finally fix decades of funding disparities; 

    • works by taking the actual cost of educating kids and splitting it between the state and local communities according to how much those local communities can afford;

    • achieves equity and adequacy in public school funding when fully funded; 

    • provides a constitutional funding solution to meet the needs of Ohio’s diverse school districts and communities, and the students they serve;

    • takes into account the ability of rural districts to meet its share;

    • helps relieve rural property owners of unsustainable and unfair property tax burdens

      • Bottom line: The Fair School Funding Plan must be restored and fully funded in the Senate Budget bill so that Ohio’s children can thrive and all our communities can prosper.
         

  • ​➡️ Remove the 30% cap on carryover funds for school districts. Taking districts’ ability to have cash reserves that go 30% or more beyond their operating costs because it  

    • hurts long-term planning, preventing rural districts from being able to offer the facilities and programming that could keep families from leaving the community;

    • punishes fiscal discipline, forcing districts who have carefully saved taxpayer funds over time to abandon the projects they have been saving toward;

    • undermines local control;

    • forces districts to go back to the voters with property tax levies more frequently, increasing program instability;

    • does not solve the growing problem of property taxes, providing – at best – only a temporary solution.Bottom line: The amendment mandating a 30% cap on carryover funds for local school districts must be removed from the budget bill so districts can plan and make the budget decisions that best fit their communities.

      • Bottom line: The amendment mandating a 30% cap on carryover funds for local school districts must be removed from the budget bill so districts can plan and make the budget decisions that best fit their communities.

Find your Senator, get their contact information, and get tips for effective messaging here

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🔗 Resources to help you spread the word 🔗

Access media coverage of our event here and here, our press release here, and event photos here

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