Ohio Educrats' Plan for School Funding: Feed the Addiction!

Ohio’s “never enough” crowd is at it again. You know the ones. The educrats and union reps surrounding Ohio’s public education establishment who believe (and say) that no matter how much the state legislature spends and allocates to education, it’s never enough. Motivated by the twin misconceptions that Ohio’s schools are under-funded as a whole and that more funding will lead to better schools, they’re proposing an amendment to the Ohio Constitution taking the form of a ballot initiative. This proposal will effectively write successive blank checks to the Ohio Board of Education which will be rendered untouchable by the state legislature and lead to unavoidable cuts in other state programs and Scandinavian tax increases to pay for them. In the meantime, however, nothing about Ohio’s schools or students will change.

The proposed amendment will effectively place K-12 funding in the hands of the Ohio Board of Education who would then dictate to the state legislature (you know, the ones who traditionally control the power of the purse in an electoral democracy) what that year’s education budget would be. Should the legislature dare to dissent, the Board’s plan could only be overridden by a three-fifths vote in both houses and even then would be subject to a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court. Furthermore, the amendment to the Ohio Constitution classifies “a high-quality education” as an inalienable right, and one which doubtless would be open to interpretation by this unelected board and the Court. By daring to appose snowballing increases to education funding, the state legislature would therefore be denying Ohio children of this manufactured right.

With their hands tied by the “never enough” crowd and unable to meet their increasing demands, Ohio’s legislators would be faced with a choice between two bad options: cuts to vital state services like public safety and Medicare and increases in taxes to pay for it all. Proponents of this amendment have said quite plainly that they do not care about the very clear scarcity of Ohio’s resources or the competing demands of society for those resources. Instead, as William Phillis has said, “the amendment will put school funding on ‘autopilot’ in that the level of resources will be based on student needs and not residual budgeting.” For those of you who attacked the proposed Tax and Expenditure Limitation in such a manner, this should be your rallying cry. Mandated constitutional increases to state spending are just as dangerous for a state as mandated constitutional limits.

Of course, increased spending to Ohio’s broken-down, monopolistic, bureaucracy-choked public education establishment would provide no incentives whatsoever to reform the system. On the contrary, it would reinforce the educrats’ belief that more and more funding is needed in able to support this inalienable right to a “high-quality education,” whatever that means. Ohio’s public education system is in desperate need of real reform, and monetary needs are only the tip of the iceberg. Structural reforms need to be implemented. Local property taxes must be eliminated from the funding equation. Competition from private and charter schools needs to be introduced. Allocation should be shifted from buildings and artificial boundaries and unions to parents and students in the form of vouchers. Ohio’s educational establishment needs a twelve step program, not more and more booze to feed their addiction.