First Amendment: Protection FROM Christianity

The following story was published in Hilliard This Week, April 26, 2007:


Prayer in the schools became an issue recently when a resident questioned the "disruption" of it during a regular Hilliard school board meeting.

The only thing that surprised Darby High School Principal Dave Stewart about Jim Slubowski's concern that students were leaving the classroom in the middle of a teacher's presentation to pray was the timing. "It is during a very specific period of time," Stewart said, "at a very specific time of day."

Typically during Ramadan, he said, students who are of the Muslim faith, or believe in Islam, seek out a room at the school to pray.

"It's only during Ramadan," said Stewart.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Moslem year and a time for 30 days of fasting as well as prayer.

"During that period of time for Muslim students, it is much more critical, according to their faith, that they pray at very specific times," Stewart said. "There is only one time during the school day that happens. This is not something that goes on on an ongoing basis all day long or all year long."

Ramadan was in the fall. Stewart was surprised to learn that Slubowski, a resident of Packard Drive, attended a meeting in March to voice concerns about the "disruption" in the classroom because of students leaving for prayer.

Michelle Wray, school-community relations coordinator, said the school district can neither encourage nor prevent prayer in school.

"I think a lot of people think that with the whole separation of church and state, that prayer isn't allowed in school," she said. "That is not the case. We can't endorse it, and we can't require it. We can't discriminate against anyone either, so we need to do what we can to make sure we are meeting the needs of students without disrupting the education of themselves and others."

Stewart said he has never had a request from anyone of the Christian-based faiths for prayer time, but schools in the United States are typically scheduled around the religious holidays of Christianity.

"With the Christian religion, you could be praying now, and I wouldn't know it," said Wray.

Students sometimes participate in "See You At The Pole," in which they gather at the flag pole to pray, but, Wray said, that is usually held before school starts for the day.

In the practice of Judaism, she said, students are granted absences to observe their religious holidays.

The litmus test, Stewart said, is based around the word disruptive.

"We do retain the right for a teacher to say, on a given day, that it would be disruptive," he said, referring to examinations or other presentations. "The Muslim students, that's the give and take, they understand that and respect it."

Slubowski said she is not sure what is taking place at the school.

"There is a lot of hearsay back and forth," he said. "That's why I am throwing this out to you and saying maybe we should look into this."

If the program is causing a material disruption of classroom procedures, Slubowski said, it should be ended.

Stepping out of the classroom for approximately five to 10 minutes of prayer, according to Stewart, is less disruptive than having to excuse students for an entire day. He said it is not uncommon for students to go in and out of the classrooms to use the restroom, go to the office, see guidance counselors or attend other functions.

The Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators issued a legal note stating that students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers as long as they are not disruptive.

An example used in the legal note is that students may not decide to pray as the teacher is calling on them.

"It is a minimal number of students who ask to leave for religious prayer," Wray said.
Fifteen to 20 students, both male and female, ask to leave the classroom to pray during Ramadan, said Stewart.

Once the obligation of prayer is fulfilled, he said, the students return to the classroom.
While Davidson High School probably has students ask to be excused, Wray said Darby has more Somalian students, many of whom are Muslim.

"Dave has worked with it more," she said. "I have never heard of a request at the elementary school."

A room at the school is not specifically designated as a prayer room. She said it is generally a space which offers some privacy for a brief period of time, before returning to its designated use.

--------------------------

There are just a whole bunch of undercurrents in this article:

• Thinking the best of him, we might believe Mr. Slubowski was be expressing concern that his child is being impacted by having the Muslim students leave the room. Except that Mr. Slubowski lives in the Davidson HS attendance zone now, and will remain there after the new attendance zones are put into effect. One cannot imagine he's trying to stand up for the Somali students and say their education is being negatively impacted by the customs of Islam. Thinking not so generously, it could be that Mr. Slubowski is simply objecting to the Somali kids getting what he perceives to be 'special treatment.' I can see a little of that. After decades of having their faith suppressed in school and government settings, it may be valid for Christians to ask if everyone is getting the same deal.
  
• The school officials defend their actions (which I think are reasonable by the way) by saying that they have never been asked by Christians for the same kind of latitude. I think the situation may be that the ACLU has been so aggressive in their war against religion (in particular Christianity) in public schools that no one thinks there's any a latitude at all. Read this article to get a sense of what I mean: the ACLU thought that having a Christian group come on the school grounds on the weekend was a violation of Constitutional protections. Why would any Christian think it was okay to do anything in regard to their faith during actual school hours?
  
• Ms. Wray's comment that "With the Christian religion, you could be praying right now, and I wouldn't know it" was perhaps not the brightest thing that could have been said. I'm sure her meaning was that it is impossible for schools to ban all practice of religious customs because one can pray without others knowing it. But it sounds more offensive to me, because it could be taken to mean that it is okay to ban visible Christian acts because we have a slealth mode available as well.
  
• I'm surprised that it is generally acceptable for students to get up and leave class. I'm sure things have changed since 1970 when I was in high school, when it was very very rare for a student to be pulled from class, or to be excused in the middle of class. I don't know how a teacher can be expected to complete a lesson if kids are coming and going as they please. Is it truly as common as the school officials would have you believe, or was did they give that answer just to head off further controversy?
  
• The reporter noted that this is an issue at Darby HS and not so much Davidson HS. This will only add fuel to the conversation that Davidson is better than Darby somehow. I tend to think the opposite by the way. The Darby kids are going to benefit from their exposure to and interaction with other cultures. And if we're not careful, the Davidson kids will develop a sense of superiority and of permission to discriminate which will not serve our country and our world well going forward.

The community of the Hilliard City School District now numbers over 75,000, with 15,000 kids attending school. Hilliard will continue to grow more diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion. We can either embrace that, or watch another cycle of 'white flight' in which the white folks who can afford it move out.

That's just what the developers would like to see happen by the way...

School Vouchers & Economic Segregation

I have watched my community be systematically harvested by residential developers and the politicians on their payroll, and a couple of years ago decided to do something about it. As a business executive, the first thing I wanted to understand was money flows -- where did money come from, and where was it going. It was only then that I understood the complex relationship between suburban development and school operations.

It comes down to this: the public school system has the authority to suck up money from the local taxpayers to build a school system which is has sufficient quality to attract more people to the community. That creates the demand for more houses, and the developers get rich. In fact, they get so rich that they spend a lot of money supporting the local politicians to make sure the developers are granted all the zoning and infrastructure support they need. Every anti-development politician in our community has been ridden out of town on a rail.

The trouble is that this is a Ponzi scheme. People build houses in our community because they love the schools, not knowing that their incremental tax contribution doesn't come close to paying the full cost of the demands they place on the school system. So the school board keeps coming back to the same taxpayers over and over to get more money to cover the funding shortage. Meanwhile the developers are getting richer all the time.

Having read and studied the proposed amendment language a couple of times, I'm quite sure that it will cost me more, and our school system will get less. The clue is one sentence in the amendment which says something like "no district will get more than it needs." I'm confident that it means districts like our will be capped, just as we are under the current budget.

If the stereotype is that right-wingers like big business and left-wingers like big government, then I’m as centrist as one can get. I think both are bad because all big entities seek self-preservation above all else, including their reason for existence.

My recommendation is to transform to a pure voucher system, where the money follows the kids. The vouchers are paid for by tax dollars, and every kid gets exactly the same dollar value assigned to their vouchers. Only accredited schools can turn in vouchers to the State for cash. To be an accredited school, the school must accept any student from Ohio, accept the voucher as 100% of tuition, and operate as a not-for-profit entity (ie no shareholders and no distribution of ‘profits’). The staff of the school must consist of licensed teachers, and the curriculum must meet the current state requirements. The kids must be able to pass whatever standardized testing is administered today. The State would have the responsibility of providing a transportation system which would take a kid from their home to any school within a reasonable distance at no cost.

I think we would end up with a combination of multi-building systems and individual boutique schools. Some would offer broad curricula and others would specialize. I envision the current school administrators running these schools (with some tune up of their business skills) under the supervision of a Board of Directors elected by the parents of the students who attend the schools.

I don’t understand why we give kids and parents a choice where to send their kids for post-secondary education, but not for primary and secondary education. Do we suddenly become better consumers of educational services when our kids graduate from high school? Why don’t we dictate where kids can go to college?

And finally, we have to recognize that public school systems in Ohio remain segregated, despite several decades of desegregation laws. But we do it in a more subtle and nefarious way than the days of explicit racial segregation. Our line today is: “anyone can attend our schools as long as you can afford to live in our neighborhood.” Consequently, the urban schools are poorer and less White than ever. Of the three largest districts in the state, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, the non-White population is 71%, 84% and 76% respectively. And they have among the largest per-pupil spending in the state. Blue Bexley did a beautiful analysis showing that there is no positive correlation between per-pupil spending and standardized test scores. Sending more money into these school systems won’t make the kids any less poor or the schools any less segregated. What we need to do is give those inner city kids a chance to attend the lily white suburban schools.

Sadly, as our own school district (Hilliard) has grown larger, the same kind of implicit segregation has crept into our community. While we are only a suburban district, our population is now over 75,000 and there are 15,000 kids in our schools. The affluent neighborhoods are in the northern part of the district and the multi-family and low-income housing is in the south. With 22 neighborhood school buildings, they are beginning to take on differing profiles that match the economic geography. With a third high school scheduled to come online in three years, our community is now engaged in a reassignment of neighborhoods to schools. Some, including me, want to use this opportunity to rebalance the demographics across the three buildings. Many, particularly those of the most affluent neighborhoods, want the attendance boundaries drawn simply on the basis of proximity. One person even got up and said that “those people” live in “those neighborhoods” because they want to! Like if a poor black family hit the Lotto they would say “hey, let’s stay here in the ghetto.”

If I wanted the state to spend more money on anything, it would be by creating affordable housing in the suburbs. I’m not talking about another generation of ‘The Projects’ but rather a community development policy which says that x% of any new housing development must be dedicated to affordable homes, interspersed through the whole development. Of course, this has zero chance of being implemented. Most of our suburban neighbors would gladly pay more and more taxes to make sure the poor blacks folks are kept in the ghettos where they belong. When we want to help the black folks, we’ll go to their community and work in the soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Then we’ll go back to our safe affluent neighborhoods, go into our big house with two cars in the garage, and set the alarm just in case we were followed.

We can’t keep feeding money into the same old system and expect it to get better. We need a new system. We need to let Americans – all Americans – do what they do best: Have a choice.

Schools: Natural Monopolies?

Bad voucher ideas have given vouchers a bad name.

Monopolies are rarely a good thing. Economists have a concept of 'natural monopoly,' which refers to a situation where the cost of infrastructure is so great that once one entity stakes out the territory, there is no economic incentive for a competitor to build a parallel infrastructure. For example, once one company builds a natural gas distribution network through a city, no one else will bother. Generally, when such a natural monopoly exists, the government takes the role of regulator to protect the consumers. Hence the ICC and its offspring, the FCC, and all the state public utility commissions.

We used to think telephone networks were like this, which is why Congress granted AT&T monopoly status years ago. But technology changed (cable tv and cellular in particular) and now we have lots of choice in our local phone service -- at least if you live in a metro area.

We have a similar situation with the schools I think. Many believe school systems are a natural monopoly, but I don't think that's necessarily true. In a metro area, in Ohio at least, we typically have a poor urban core surrounded by a collection of wealthy suburbs. This is nothing more than new age segregation, just as surely as if there were "po' folks keep out" signs on the suburban town limits. I think one of two things should happen: a) all the metro area school districts should be merged and any kid in the district should be able to attend any school they want (transportation provided); or, b) every kid in the metro area is given a voucher worth the average per-student spending in the metro area, and that voucher can be used to pay 100% of the tuition in any school in any district in the area.

In the rural areas, the situation is different. Population density is too low to afford much in the way of choice. Land values are low as well. But there are two distinct situations here too. In the case of agricultural areas, there is a sustainable economy with high employment, but not a lot of wealth (land poor as they say). It is reasonable public policy, in my opinion, to make it worth being a farmer, and if that means subsidizing the schools, so be it.

But there are other rural areas which aren't farmland, such as southeastern Ohio. My family settled in Lawrence County in the 1790s (my gggggrandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran), and there are many generations of my family buried there. But there aren't so many of my relatives left there today. Just as my ancestors left Europe to seek a better economic climate, my generation bailed out of post-industrial Appalachia to find better places to raise our families. We should not subsidize the cost of living for families in places without a viable economy just because there are many who would rather take Welfare than move.

Therein lays the most difficult problem of all. How do you incent the parents to go find a better place to live, yet not punish the kids of the parents who are too stupid or lazy to move?

Sam Kinison once said we shouldn't be sending food to Ethiopia, we should be sending them U-Hauls.

Same idea.

E=mc2 for everyone

From the Columbus Dispatch, January 26, 2006:

To better prepare Ohio’s high-school
graduates for college or work, Gov. Bob Taft proposed a bold new plan yesterday
during his final State of the State address that would require all students to
take more math, science and foreign-language courses.

Starting with students who graduate in 2011, a new core set of courses
would be required, including Algebra 2, physics and chemistry.

The new requirements would apply to all high-school students whether
they plan to attend college or not, although parents could sign a waiver opting
out of the courses and accepting the consequences.
For example, students
opting out wouldn’t be able to attend a state university under Taft’s
plan.

Bad idea Governor.

I'm okay with the notion that there is are a core set of subjects in which every high school graduate should be able to demostrate proficiency. But I don't see the sense of including Algebra 2, Physics and Chemistry in that set. Other nations take a more pragmatic view of school: sort the kids out by skill, potential and motivation before they get to high school. Some will go to schools which focus on science and mathematics. Others go to arts academies. Some go to learn a skilled trade.

The countries recognize that resources aren't limitless, and that an effort to raise the knowledge level for all students takes away resources from that fraction that can really make a difference. Our country thrived when it was contribute or starve. Only now are we seeing the harm of expending ever-increasing resources on protecting the weakest in our society -- creating a tax burden drag and preventing resources from being used to nurture our most promising young people.

Another thing most of those countries have -- compulsary military service. Most serve as enlisted personnel where they learn a skill, then those who wish can attend college. Some will attend college first, deferring their service until they graduate, and then serve as officers. Rich or poor, everyone serves -- notice that Prince William, the future King of England, is just beginning his military service.

You can't make Ohio a better place for business with this approach. Ohio was an economic powerhouse in the past century because: a) heavy industry grew around the Great Lakes; and, b) immigrant labor was cheap. Today, the major economic regions of the US are on the coasts -- east, west and south -- because state governments and unions in the Great Lakes region got greedy and ran industry out.

Major corporations have very little geographic or national loyalty. They move their production facilities to wherever their total costs are minimized. That includes cost of raw materials (including transportation), production labor costs, tax burden, and the cost of distribution. Once upon a time that meant the Great Lakes. Today it means Asia.

We've made it very hard for heavy industry to survive in the US. If we are going to participate in a global economy, then the steel workers in Cleveland are going to have to work for the same wages as the steelworkers in China. The information industry workers in Columbus are going to need to compete with the talented folks in India. The auto workers in Toledo need to work for the same wages as their opposite numbers in Korea. And the state government needs to get out of the entitlement business.

In which class will you teach our kids that they'll never have it as good as their grandparents? That's a new thing in the history of America...

Wow -- this is what a charter school should be

The following was announced today in the Columbus Dispatch. For readers outside our community, Battelle Memorial Institute is one of the largest and most respected private research organizations in the country. Some of the more famous examples of their work: a) invented xerographic photocopying, which they spun off as a little company called Xerox; b) the candy coating on M&Ms; c) key technologies required for the Manhattan Project in WWII (they still operate the DOE Labs in Hanford WA); d) the lifting mechanism installed in the Glomar Explorer used to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine. The list is massive. The Ohio State University is the second largest university in the country (behind the University of Texas), and it operates a vast research program. Battelle and Ohio State have been closely linked for years, and the two campuses are side by side.

I pray this experiment will be overwhelmingly successful, encouraging other pairings of universities and successful businesses to operate schools for science, leadership, public service, business and a myriad of other fields. It's high time American businesses quit sitting back and hoping our failing pubilc schools would produce their future leaders and contributors!

From the Columbus Dispatch: 18 Jan 2006:

A new high school? Big deal.

But this high school has the backing of Battelle and Ohio State University, behemoths that will put muscle behind its math and science focus. It will be small, free and open to students in the 16 Franklin County public school districts.

And there’s nothing like it in Ohio, and few if any comparisons in the country.

The Metro School will open this fall to ninth-graders and add a grade each of the next three years. Only 100 students will be admitted in each grade.

"It’s an unprecedented partnership," said Brad Mitchell, CEO of the Educational Council, a consortium of the Franklin County school districts. "It’s a unique public-private partnership. This will help make high school more relevant, successful, rigorous."

Education leaders nationally and in Ohio have said schools need to produce more students skilled in science, technology, engineering and math — the socalled STEM disciplines, which are viewed as being important job-generating fields. "In the 21 st century, science, technology, engineering and mathematics are too important" to ignore in schools, said Ohio Department of Education spokesman J.C. Benton. More schools with similar focuses are in the pipeline, he said. The partnership, which will be officially announced today, along with the Metro School’s location, goes beyond the ties many schools have with private business — tutoring and mentoring. The university and Battelle — together, worth billions of dollars — will maintain an intimate relationship with the school and its students.

In addition to the $1.2 million donated by Ohio State for building leases, university faculty members will be involved in training teachers at the school. It’ll be a learning lab of sorts, testing new methods of teaching math and science.

Battelle, a science and technology company based in Columbus, donated more than $500,000 for startup costs and also will help students discover math, science and engineering. "By investing in this new school, we’re investing in the future of our community," said Carl F. Kohrt, president
and CEO of Battelle. Here’s how the school is planned to work: Slots will be allotted to each district based on its size. Columbus Public Schools, with almost 60,000 students, would get the most slots at about 140. Students interested in college hoping for a nontraditional high-school experience may
apply, write a letter of interest and interview with school staff. The staff will select the "best fits," then allow the school district to select from the list of candidates. Metro School students won’t all be the best and brightest, officials say, but a mix of different abilities.

If students want football, band or drama, they’ll get it at their home high schools. "We’re looking for a student who is motivated, wants to go to college, but needs a little extra help," Mitchell said. "Every district has students like this, and a big, comprehensive high school can only do so much."
There will be diversity requirements. Teachers, who haven’t been hired yet, will come from the
school districts. They won’t stay at the school permanently but will learn new teaching methods there and take those methods back to their home schools and pass them on to other educators. State funding will follow the students who attend the Metro School — much like it does when students leave districts for charter schools — but additional costs will be funded through grants and support from the university and Battelle. In time, the school hopes to be self-sufficient. Officials yesterday wouldn’t say how much it will cost to run.

Students’ ninth- and 10 th-grade years will be spent doing required coursework and preparing for the Ohio Graduation Test, which sophomores take. Upperclassmen will spend most of their time getting work and internship experience. "The school’s unique academic focus and learning opportunities
will help put Columbus and the state of Ohio at the cutting edge, enhancing math
and science education for students and educators alike," said Ohio State President Karen A. Holbrook. The school will be led by Marcy Raymond, a former Reynoldsburg High School administrator who has school-reform experience, said Reynoldsburg Superintendent Richard Ross. School districts say they’re pleased to have another option for kids with interest in math and science. There
are few local options now, save Horizon Science Academy, a charter school. "Reynoldsburg is always positive about choices for kids and families," Ross said. "We see this as another opportunity for our kids and parents to choose."

The Metro School also is designed to make traditional public schools more competitive with charter schools and private schools, which will be eligible this fall for students using state tuition vouchers.
"We’re living in an education market where public schools have to be as adept and responsive as
they’ve ever been. We want to make public education in Franklin County the first and best choice," Mitchell said.

An interesting survey

I was called to participate in a survey yesterday. While my inclination is to say 'No thanks' and hang up when I get one of these calls, this one was about the Hilliard City Schools - a subject on which I have passionate opinions. The questions were interesting, and I found myself regretting that the only acceptable answers were in the form 'mostly agree,' 'disagee,' etc. I wanted to say much more.

Good thing I have a blog -- so here goes:

"What is the single largest problem facing Hilliard City Schools?"

I answered that I felt it is unbalanced residential versus commercial development. In the current funding structure, one-third of the money comes from residential property taxes, one-third from commercial property taxes, and one-third from state income taxes. When a new home is built, there is on average one new kid added to the student population. The property tax revenue from that house contributes one third of the cost of educating the new kid, and the income taxes paid by the parents should kick in another third. However, there is no new commercial tax revenue just because a new house is built. So where does that missing third come from? Well, the state surely isn't covering it, at least in the suburban districts. If anything, the state share is going down. So that means that the missing third must be covered by increased millage, which affects current residents and current businesses alike. EVERY TIME A NEW HOUSE IS BUILT, THE CURRENT RESIDENTS ARE SUBSIDIZING THE INCREMENTAL COST OF EDUCATION THAT NEW HOUSE CAUSES.

"Now that the Environmentally Sensitive Conservation District (ESCD) has been opened for the construction of a school, is that where a third high school should be built?"

Absolutely not. There are plenty of places within the school district where another high/middle school campus can be built without having to invade the ESCD. The real problem is that these places are outside the current and potential boundaries of the City of Hilliard. The Hilliard City School District is the #1 payer of income taxes in the City of Hilliard, and the city administration wants very much for any additional high schools to be within the city limits. But half of the kids in our district live in other municipalities, notably the City of Columbus. Why not build the high school in an area which is in the southern part of the district, but not in the City of Hilliard? The other issue is that there are developers who are clamoring to get their hands on the land in the ESCD. If we allow the construction of a high school within the ESCD, including all the utility infrastructure required, how much further is the leap to allow residential construction? Not much!

"What do I think about Board Member [fill in the blank]?"

I was surprised this question was even asked, and wonder if when the survey results are published, these items will be included? Many of these folks have been my friends for several years, so my responses were favorable.

"What do I think about the Superintendent?"

Complex situation. As an educator, I hold Dale McVey in very high regard. As an administrator, he seems to be very good. However, as a strategic thinker he seems to be weak. I'd prefer to think that than believe he is allowing himself to be influenced by the wrong people.

"What do I think about Mayor Don Schoenhardt?"

Don't trust him. He seems to be unwilling to take responsibility for the damage unbalanced residential vs commercial development is having on both the city and the school district. The opening of the ESCD for residential development is a bad thing unless he finds a way to bring a significant amount of commercial development in at the same time. Columbus, Dublin, Worthington, New Albany, and Gahanna all seem to understand this, and have already attracted most of the commercial tenants in our metro area. How can Hilliard now attract commercial entities to the city without offering tax incentives (e.g. Tax Increment Financing schemes) that bring no benefit to the schools or the whole of the city?

At the end, the million dollar question was asked: Would I vote for an $80 million levy if it were placed on the ballot in May? Understanding that I have voted in favor of every single levy placed before since we moved to the Hilliard School district 28 years ago, my answer was "no." It feels like the only vote I have to stop this irresponsible development is to make the schools unattractive for additional residents. Shame on our community leaders for allowing this to be the case.

[UPDATE: March 14, 2006]

It turns out that the school officials have no intention of publishing the results of this survey. Their claim was that the survey was paid for by the political committee which is supporting the levy issue, and therefore the results are their confidential property. I'm going to see what I can do to get the results declared to be a public document, because the elected school officials may have been given the opportunity to read them and use them in their decision making.

... Oh, and I voted in favor of the levy once again.

Milton Friedman on School Vouchers

In their 1979 book, “Free to Choose,” Milton and Rose Friedman wrote an essay entitled “What’s Wrong with Our Schools.” It should be required reading for anyone who wishes to debate the current state of the American public school system and the changes which are needed. One of the observations the Friedmans make is this: if every family in every district had the same income and wealth, then schools could simply be paid for by tuition assessments while each family had kids in school.

But that’s not the way things are. There is a broad spectrum of wealth and income, and those with wealth are prone to form exclusive (i.e. discriminatory) communities with other wealthy families. In this country, we may not discriminate by race, creed, color, or national origin, but we most certainly discriminate by wealth.
The cost the wealthy bear for being allowed to perpetrate that discrimination is that they must pay a ransom, in the form of school taxes, which is used to subsidize schools in poor neighborhoods.

Here in Ohio, schools are funded by a mixture of local taxes and state taxes. The local school district may collect both property and income taxes, although most use property taxes alone. The state tax is entirely income based. While the local taxes collected remain within the district, the state redistributes the income taxes it collects in inverse proportion to the taxes collected locally. The residents of wealthy districts pay out much more state income tax than they receive back, with most of their state income tax money going to the poor districts.

Why doesn’t this socialist approach to funding work? Because crummy schools run by inept administrators get money anyway! The urban district in our city spends more per child than many of the suburban districts, yet is among the worst districts in our state in terms of attendance, graduation, college admission and on standardized testing.

Giving that district more money won’t solve the problem. Giving the parents and kids a choice WHERE they go to school will. A voucher system as outlined by the Friedmans can work.

Let’s give it a try.

No Child Left Behind -- How do you pay for it?

Still no well-developed thoughts yet, but one angle hit me this morning: Does NCLB place any requirements on a school system that should not be there?

Let's forget about administrative costs for the moment, and just think about what outcomes NCLB is after. Are there any of those outcomes which are bad or fruitless?

I hear school administrators (including the ones in my family) say NCLB is an unfunded mandate, as though that is something new, or something necessarily bad.

There are all kinds of requirements placed on school systems that aren't necessarily followed by funding from the government entity that issues the requirement. For example, school buildings are required to have fire alarm systems and sprinklers for the safety of the students and staff. This requirement is usually set by the state or municipal building code. But there is no expectation on the part of the school administration that either one of those government entities will provide the money to add the fire safety systems to the school buildings.

After all, the people that would be taxed by the municipality are the same folks who get taxed by the school system. So in the end, it doesn't make any difference which entity collects the tax, the same people are paying for the safety systems.

Maybe we should think of NCLB as a "safety standard." What one labels things can make a big difference in how others think about it (you can sell “manure” at the garden store, but not “feces”). The intended purpose of NCLB, at least as I understand it, is to ensure that school systems don't just give up on the kids that are challenging or expensive to educate.

Like the installation of a fire safety system, implementing NCLB will cost more in districts that don't already pay attention to the kids on the margin. The question is where that money should come from, and that question takes us back to libertarian vs liberal political views (more labels).

My view, which I guess you could label as libertarian, is that you should leave local matters up to local governments, and the more localized the better. In the case of NCLB, I can accept that the federal government has the duty and power to set national education standards that have to be met if you want to run a school. I’m also supportive of the concept that every American kid must have access to a decent education.

So now the question becomes: To how small a government entity can we delegate the funding duty?

A single school system is too small, at least here in Ohio. The approach of having urban, suburban and rural school districts, funded primarily by property taxes, means there is a broad diversity in the economic capacity across districts. So you need to have some kind of Robin Hood taxation system which pulls money from the wealthiest areas and gives it to the poorest ones.

In Ohio, we perform the redistribution function at the state level. Another choice is at the county level, and that might work pretty well here in Franklin County. But then Madison County, our neighbor to the west, might be in trouble. It is almost all farmland, but with suburban sprawl moving over its borders. That means more kids but an insufficient tax base, because of the lack of significant commercial activity in that county. I suppose that we could contemplate school funding zones which are comprised of multiple counties – something on the order of economic zones as defined by the US Dept of Commerce. Maybe we match them up with Congressional districts – wouldn’t that put on new spin on gerrymandering?!

That bring us to exactly where Ohio is today – overlaying the district level funding with a statewide funding system. It may not be working well, but it could if our elected officials fulfilled their duty. Ohio has a broad enough economy that we should be able to fund and administer our NCLB duties entirely within the state.

But what about my home state of West Virginia? The population of the entire state is about the same as Greater Columbus, but WV has very little commercial underpinnings, and it is shrinking every day (one bright spot is the major presence Toyota has established near Charleston). WV schools need help from other states to if they are to operate at higher standards.

Seems to me that if you argue that the federal government should fund any standard they put in place, then you are saying that the Robin Hood system for school funding should be broadened to the federal level. In other words, there are states which cannot raise the money to fund NCLB within their own borders.

Remember, every school system in every town, in every county, in every state has to meet the same standard. Every citizen of the US that the federal government would tax is also a citizen of a state, a county and a community.

If we think NCLB should be funded at the federal level, then why not federalize all public schools?

Which brings up situations like New Orleans. At what point does it become the duty of the head of a household to say, “it sucks around here, let’s move someplace better.” During the middle of the 20th century, there was a mass migration from Appalachia to the manufacturing centers in Ohio and Michigan. During the Depression, waves of people moved from the Ozarks to California. Those folks didn’t wait for the government to come make their life better – they lashed everything they could to the pickup and headed for the promised land.

When we use federal money to rebuild cities wiped out by natural disasters or to fund schools in failing economic zones, it seems to me like we are underwriting the bad decisions and fear of risktaking (in terms of moving) on the part of folks who want to stay in those areas. Maybe one of the key problems in America is that we built such a comprehensive social safety net that folks no longer feel at risk for much of anything, expecting someone else to bail them out (a thought planted by a friend). If insurance doesn’t cover our loss, there’s always someone to sue for insult and injury.

Without that sense of being already 'at risk,' we've lost our motivation to take risks. It was that motivation that caused our ancestors to come to America and give the great experiment a try. I bet the Fall of Rome began when the Roman citizens lost their fear of being invaded. I think that's where we are in the US today.

Fat, dumb and happy indeed.

Education = Prosperity?

In his blog, Professor Jim Horn observes

"What makes this morning’s New York Times
school demonization editorial
any different from the average garden variety one, is that this time, in its
haste to lambaste the schools by making test score comparisons with other
nations, Staples does not bother to note that the other better nation, this time
Japan, has been in economic recession for over 15 years, despite its seemingly
advanced education strategies grounded in homogeneity and groupthink. I ask you,
Mr. Staples, is this the kind of model that we should emulate to keep America
from becoming “a second-rate economic power?”

I think Professor Horn is trying to get our public education system off the hook for being the chief cause of all ills in America, and I agree with him on this point. He makes a great observation that Japan has an education system which is widely viewed as a producer of well-educated kids. Yet their economy is not doing well at all. You could say the same thing about Germany.

But if you buy into this perspective, I think one of the actions you would have to argue for is allocating fewer resources to something we're not so good at (running the public education system), and allocating more to developing the economy to drive up employment and GNP.

Did America become a great economic and political power because our educational system was exceptional -- producing a smarter population than anyone else? If you go back to the dawn of the American industrial age, I don't think that was the case. America's strength flowed from: a) a political environment that allowed entrepreneurs to have a shot of success; b) a wealth of natural resources for the taking; c) a labor force that was willing to work hard to get their shot at the good life; and, d) having the good luck to form our country at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

You didn't need much education to work in a steel mill and earn a good wage. But that was because we had lots of steel mills, and came to dominate the world market. We've lost many of those manufacturing jobs to other countries. The whole middle class is disappearing from our economy. We increasing have only highly educated professionals and hamburger flippers, with not much in between. We need to have industries that employ lots of people. Even better if those products are desired outside our country and we can generate export income.
Many American jobs have been lost to uneducated workers elsewhere in the world. Maybe its more important to have employed Americans than educated Americans. These aren't mutually exclusive conditions, but you can't eat a diploma.

Charter Schools, Vouchers and Privatization

I'm a big fan of the theory behind charter schools and vouchers because they give a choice to consumers (parents, kids, and even teachers) and cause money to flow to the schools that are getting results. This is exactly how our college system works in the US, and there's no reason why it can't work for elementary and secondary schools as well.

Would I be even happier if all schools were private? Maybe, but we need to ensure that everyone has access to a good education regardless of their ability to pay. There's no way to do that except to figure out a way to get money from the wealthy to subsidize the education of the poor.

The typical way of achieving this is to collect taxes and then let government entities make the decisions how to redistribute the money to public schools. The problem is that the people who make the decisions about how to distribute and use the money are politicians and bureaucrats who rarely demonstrate the ability to perform this function well. The charter school fiasco is an example. Once the vultures of our society learned that money was being handed out without adequate controls, all kinds of unqualified folks opened up charter schools to make a fast buck. The money was wasted and the kids got nothing.

Again, the college system provides a model. My eldest attended a private school here in Ohio. It was expensive, and our financial condition was such that we could not qualify for any financial aid. But this school is also known for giving generous scholarships to promising kids, which no doubt contributes to the excellence of the school. I’ve always joked that when you paid full tuition to a good private college, you are paying for both your own kid and one on scholarship. But I think it’s the truth, and it’s also okay with me.

The youngest considered Northwestern before choosing the Honors Program at Ohio State. One of things that really impressed me about Northwestern was that they said they select the students they want first (which is based on much more than academics), then figured out the funding. The student who gave us the campus tour said she came from the ghettos of Chicago, but was attending Northwestern for free. That’s the way it should be done.

For K-12, it would be a daunting task to go through same kind of admissions process used by colleges. That’s where vouchers come in. Every kid gets a voucher that’s worth say $10,000 per year, and can spend it at any accredited school. Each school can decide how to allocate that money to buildings, equipment, staff, books, extracurricular activities, and so on. Some may choose not to have sports, and put all the money into PhD level teachers in math and science. Others may focus on what we today call ‘vocational education.’ Others may have an athletic orientation, but not as a taxpayer-funded all-day playground. The athletics would have to be tied to a rigorous academic program.

A voucher could not just automatically be redeemed for cash. I propose that the number of vouchers which get redeemed is tied to performance on standardized tests. For example, if you have 500 kids in a school, but only 450 pass the tests, the school can only redeem 450 vouchers. You have trust that the test are valid measures of academic achievement, but we have already crossed that bridge. With this approach, bad schools are rapidly starved out, even if the parents don’t care, as is sometimes the case.

For parents who are really concerned about their kids’ education, the voucher system allows them to select schools which provide the education and environment they want for their kids, regardless of the family’s financial status. For the parents who don’t care, the tie of the voucher reimbursement to test scores keeps the parents’ ambivalence from letting bad schools carry on anyway.

Okay, so here’s the more radical component of vouchers: I believe that the public school system should be disbanded and converted to a 100% private system. A school corporation must be accredited and chartered by the state to be able to redeem vouchers, but the management of such a school is selected by a Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors is elected by those who turn in vouchers to attend the school. Each school corporation determines it own compensation program for staff, including the school calendar, salaries and benefits. Teachers are free to form unions, and school corporations are free to decide whether they will be union shops.

Some school corporations will specialize in K-6 perhaps, running just one building or hundreds of buildings across the state. Other school corporations will do K-12, but only in one community. There might even be school corporations that run only 9-12 schools that specialize in music and the arts. The combinations are endless. Larger school corporations might use their economies of scale to enable academic programs which smaller corporations just cannot afford. As an example of what I mean, as a computer science major I attended Ohio State in the 1970s because they had one of the largest academic computer complexes in the country, something a little school like my eldest’s private college could never afford. However, she studied music education, which doesn’t require a big capital budget. It was much more important for her to have access to well-respected faculty and to get to go on performance tours.

It could work. But it means wrestling power away from the politicians. And that takes an involved and informed public (whoops, slipped into another rant).

PL

Delaware property boom no boon to schools

Why doesn't the Hilliard school board and administration say this? They need to engage in dialog with Mayor Don Schonhardt and the City Council and quit acting like victims.
pl

Delaware property boom no boon to schools
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Lee Stratton
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

How fast is growth in the fastest growing area in the fastest-growing county of the state?

Residential property values increased 669 percent in one area of Delaware County during the past three years, Auditor Tod Hanks said. Delaware City Schools officials, however, say that such appreciation can be a burden to school finances. The increase was the largest seen in the auditor’s 2005 reappraisal of real estate in Delaware County. The area — Tax District 50 — includes three neighborhoods along the eastern and southern boundaries of the city of Delaware. The total housing value in that area increased from $1.2 million in 2002 to $9.1 million this year.

‘‘At the same time, the value of agricultural land went from $4.2 million down to $589,000, so you can see what happened," Hanks said. ‘‘The housing just exploded."

Since 2002, farm fields have been filled with streets, utilities and houses. As a result, the value of land has increased along with the improvements, he said. Residential property values across Delaware County increased an average of 17.6 percent during the past three years, Hanks said. The higher values will result in property tax increases of about 2 percent to 4 percent on individual tax bills. Despite the rapid growth in home construction, Delaware County trailed Franklin County, where the average home value has increased more than 21 percent since 2002.

The growth is of little comfort to Delaware school officials.

‘‘People see all those new houses and think they generate a lot of new money for the schools. That’s not the case," said Christine Blue, finance director of Delaware City Schools. ‘‘Because of increasing property values, we lose state funding."

State law prohibits schools from collecting more money from a locally voted tax levy than the levy was designed to produce. As property values increase, the collections are reduced to protect property owners from large tax increases. At the same time, Blue said, the state’s school-funding formula reduces state subsidies to schools because the increased property values in a district are viewed as wealth that could be taxed locally. Those reductions are expected to total $800,000 this year. That will leave the district with an estimated $11.2 million in state funds — if the district gains 77 students as expected.

"If those students do not materialize, the state funds will be significantly less," she said. "From where I sit, the revenueflow picture is grim.’ A community task force told the Delaware Board of Education last year that residential development does not pay for the school services it requires, Blue said. "More than eight new houses with no students are needed to fund the local cost of just one new house with one new student," Blue said.
The calculation was based on the taxes generated by a house valued at $150,000 plus the state funding provided for each student. School budgets have suffered because commercial development in the city has not kept pace with home development, she said.

In 1992, for each $100,000 of residential tax value in the school district, there was $128,000 of commercial tax value, Blue said. In 2003, there was just $61,000 of commercial value for each $100,000 of housing value.
"We haven’t lost businesses," she said. Instead, the county has gained houses.

The task force concluded that the tax base isn’t well-balanced and that more should be done to attract new businesses, Blue said. "Businesses pay taxes," she said, "without increasing the school population."

lstratton@dispatch.com

Competitive Pay for Public School Teachers

I once hosted a guy named Yamato who was an English teacher in a high school about 2 hours outside of Tokyo. He was traveling with all the video he had shot since leaving home a couple of weeks earlier. One shot was of his home. It was a standard suburban home, maybe 1500sqft on a single level. His yard consisted of about 10 feet of grass/landscaping on three side, and room to park a couple of cars (no garage) on the fourth. I asked how much such a home cost in Japan, and said about $300,000.

I then asked how a teacher could afford such an expensive house. He was confused at first, but when I told him that teacher didn't make a lot of money in the US, he told me that teachers and engineers are both paid about the same in Japan. There's a value statement for you right there.

But he also said that school is in session for 48 weeks per year, and that the kids are at the school from about 9am until 6pm. Yamato said he arrived at the school about 7am to prepare for the day. The kids have academics from 9am to 3pm, but then typically stay at the school until 6pm to get further training on Japanese culture and manners. You see, as the Japanese parents work more and more (they have a word which means "work-death"), they are spending less time with their kids. It's almost like a boarding school environment.
Yamato ends his day spending a couple of hours on his lesson plan for the following day, arriving home about 9pm.

One of his shots was of his teenage son riding away on a bicycle. I asked him how old his son was, and his answer was "fourteen or fifteen, I'm not sure." He spends 12 hours/day educating other kids, and doesn't know his own.

I spent 30 years in engineering and technical management. To get to the level I achieved, I worked long hours, went back to school for additional education, constantly competed with other folks for jobs, and in the end got results that my customers were willing to pay for.

It's interesting that you use the term "competitive salary" when my observation is that teachers rarely compete for jobs. Certainly there is the time when first hired, but after that, a teacher can go through a whole career getting regular raises and never feeling that his/her job was in jeopardy.

All this is the rationale behind a true voucher system. You can tell everyone that: a) they have to pay school taxes; and, b) they have to send their kids to school. The voucher system allows the parents to pick which school their kids should go to. Presumably, they'll pick a school which gets good results and starve out the ones that have ineffective teachers and inept administators.

When it comes time to pick a college, parents and students make this kind of choice all the time. Why not allow it at the elementary and secondary level as well?

My guess is that there are teachers at private schools that make a boatload of money. I would also bet that the parents paying the tuition have very little tolerance for low performing teachers and administrators. The school probably has scores of applicants for every opening, and they pick the cream of the crop.

If you want competitive salaries for teachers, then I say you need to compete for customers.

Ah ha, you say, we do compete for customers: People move into our suburban community to get access to our excellent schools, where we have high standards for teachers and administrators.

And therein lies the societal failure of our public schools. I think all those kids in the inner city should be allowed to show up at your doorstep, on publicly-funded transportation, and have the chance to enjoy a really good school system. They'll bring with them vouchers will your system can turn into the state for full reimbursement.

"But ALL the kids from the inner city will show up, and just make our good system bad," you say. Or maybe some folks will buy one of the inner city school buildings and start a school system that competes with yours. Maybe they'll do that by paying their teachers more, and spending less on non-academic stuff.

I don't mean for this to sound personal and accusatory. Some people argue that teachers shouldn't be paid as much as engineers or lawyers because teachers take the whole summer off. I have a friend who is a lawyer, and he only works about half the year. He's very good at what he does, and makes enough in half a year to maintain the lifestyle he desires (which is pretty simple). Should he get paid less because he works less than other lawyers? Heck no. People go to him and pay him what he demands because he gets results.

It's time to make the pay/performance relationship for teachers and administrators be more like that.

School Funding Crisis in Ohio

This is an excerpt from an article published in the Columbus Dispatch this morning:

“Hilliard schools and Logan Elm, a Pickaway County district, both fell prey to a new provision that downgraded them to "continuous improvement" — the equivalent of a C — even though districtwide test scores could have given them higher ratings.

Hilliard, which met 21 of 23 state attendance, graduation and testing goals this year, had expected to maintain its "effective" rating, but dropped a rank because its Latino, English-as-asecond-language and specialneeds students did not meet state benchmarks.

One of the principles of No Child Left Behind is that a school or district isn’t succeeding if certain
kinds of students aren’t. Hilliard and Logan Elm ended up in "continuous improvement" because more than one subgroup of students has failed portions of math or reading tests for three consecutive years. “

This is going to boil over in our community. The school district is already in a financial crunch because the funding system is broken. The federal government is allowing hordes of legal and illegal immigrants to pour into unprepared communities, then turns around and dings us because they can't pass the No Child Left Behind requirements.

If the School Board puts a levy on the fall ballot, the debate will be ugly.

Developers are Like Locusts

Our home is in a rural township on the outskirts of a reasonably large metro area. We moved here with hopes of enjoying the kind of neighborhood I grew up in. We found a 5 acre lot that was part of a little 7 lot parcel a family sold off from a larger farm. It was in the same school district our kids were already attending, only about eight miles from my office, and about the same distance for the wife to her place of business. There was a interstate highway exit about 3 miles away, giving quick access to the city center, airport and other places we might want to get to. But the thing we really enjoyed was that there was about four miles of pure farmland between our property and the outerbelt highway.

Relatively suddenly, that changed. The intersection closest to the freeway exit turned into a major retail development. It used to be that this intersection was just a four-way stop sign with cornfields all around. Now there is a Wal-Mart SuperCenter, Sam's Club, Meijers, a Ford Dealer, lots of strip-mall retails, four motel chains, and just about every chain food establishment you can think of at this intersection. At each exit of the beltway, a similar retail development has emerged. At the same time, thousands of single-family and multi-family residential developments have been constructed. This is where the problem begins.

Our metro region doesn't really have an over-arching government entity that coordinates planning and development for the whole area. There are agencies which have names that imply that they might have that authority (e.g. Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission), but they don't really. What we have is a bunch of independent municipalities and school systems which compete with one another for resources. But the point of this article is to say that it's not really the municipal governments or the school systems which are controlling things -- it's the residential developers.

When we first moved to Columbus in the 1970s (while attending college at Ohio State), the 'metro' area had a population of about a half-million. The population was mostly White with a significant African-American component. While there was some amount of manufacturing in the community, the major employers were the state government, the university, banks and insurance companies. Because Columbus is the state capital, there are also many lobbyist groups and associations with headquarters here. One interesting point about Columbus being the capital of Ohio: like Washington DC, Columbus did not exist as a city until the state government decided to build the capital city here in the early 1800s. There is no significant geographic reason, or wealth of natural resources, which would cause a major city to develop in this particular place. It's a big hunk of mostly flat land with an inconsequential river running through it. Much of the land around Hilliard was a swamp until drained with extensive systems of field tiles and trenches.

For reasons I don't fully understand, Columbus began to grow in the 1970s, and today the regional population is about 1.5 million. The racial and ethnic mix is richer, with much of the growth coming from Latin American (primarily Mexican) and African (primarily Somali) cultures. While I applaud the diversity in our community, the rapid growth -- regardless of the cultural makeup -- is NOT being managed well by the governments of our region. I fear that if we don't get ahead of this problem, it will develop into serious conflict, culminating in economic failure and increased violence. (update: notice what has been happening in France in the fall of 2005 – communities of immigrants segregated economically burst into riots and civil unrest. Could we see this here?)

One consequence worth talking about: the increasing polarization of the residential nature of the central city:

In the 1970s, before we had kids, the Columbus City Schools were required, by order of the court, to bus kids from poorer (mostly African American) neighborhoods to schools in more affluent (mostly White) neighborhoods. The reasoning was that the kids who lived in the black neighborhoods were getting a different and less comprehensive education that the kids in the white neighborhoods, and that race and affluence were an important reason for that difference. I guess the theory was that the presence of white and affluent kids in the classroom caused the teachers to teach better, the students to behave better, and it would influence the school board to allocate more resources -- like furniture, books and equipment -- to the schools in black neighborhoods, since there were going to be white kids there now. The desired result was to expose all kids, black and white, poor and affluent, to the same educational opportunities so that each kid gets the chance to develop their potential without a built-in handicap.

In theory, I can agree with this being a potential solution. But like all forced solutions, the people affected will try to find a way around a situation they don't like. The answer they chose in this case was obvious: those who could afford it moved out of the attendance area of the Columbus City Schools. The consequence was that the demographics of the Columbus City Schools became blacker and poorer.

If you want to move out of the Columbus City Schools, you need to either: a) find an existing house in a suburban school district, or, b) build a new house in a suburban school district. Finding an existing house is a good solution, but there is a limited supply of those for sale, and only a fraction of those would be desirable to an upper-middle class family moving out to have a better life. So one direct impact of the busing decision for Columbus City Schools was to create the demand for new housing in the suburban school districts.

At this point, another piece of the Columbus political environment comes into play: The City of Columbus has exclusive control of the regional water and sewer system. For a developer to build a new subdivision, he must have access to water and sewer. The suburban municipalities get access to the water/sewer system by signing contracts with the City of Columbus. These contracts specify the exact boundaries to which the suburb us allowed to annex and extend the water/sewer pipes. The City of Columbus would ensure that it retained corridors of expansion between the suburbs so that it could continue to grow through its own annexation. Ohio law does not allow "islands" of land to be annexed -- each newly annexed parcel must be adjacent to parcels already part of the annexing municipality.

At first, each of the suburbs had enough developable land specified in their water/sewer agreements to allow a fair amount of expansion through annexation. Residential developers certainly took the opportunity to fill the demand for housing creating by the "white flight" from Columbus City Schools, and new suburban developments sprang up all over. But what the developers really wanted to do was get to the large parcels of township farmland around the beltway where they could build developments of hundreds of homes (it is much more profitable to develop one community of 1,000 homes than 50 communities of 200 homes). Because most of these parcels were outside the areas specified in the suburban water contracts, it would mean that for the developer to get water/sewer service, the parcel would need to be annexed into the City of Columbus. This situation is exactly what Columbus wanted, and many such developments appeared around the beltway. We built our first house in one called Golfview Woods. Our lot was within the boundaries of the City of Columbus and in the attendance area of the Hilliard City Schools. We had no kids at the time, so the school boundaries weren't all that important anyway.

The busing policy for Columbus City Schools was eventually abandoned, presumably because everyone saw the folly of it. But rather than halting the flight from the City, this had little effect. Folks saw that the courts, with a stroke of the pen, could screw up their lives, so the flight continued. The buildings of the Columbus City Schools continued to empty, and eventually they had to shut down even their most visible building -- Central High School, right in the heart of downtown. But the Columbus City Schools still had some cards to play...

The School Board of the Columbus City Schools went to the State Board of Education and made the argument that this white flight was endangering the viability of the Columbus Schools by taking away students and tax revenue and leaving their buildings empty, while at the same time the suburbs were having to furiously build new schools to absorb the thousands of new kids showing up as new homes were being built. Wouldn't it make more sense, they argued, to allow the attendance area of the Columbus City Schools to automatically move with the boundaries of the City of Columbus? The suburbs could take in all they could within their existing water/sewer service boundaries, but that space was limited, and Columbus -- City and Schools -- would get everything else. The most radical part of the proposal was that it be made retroactive: if a parcel of land had been annexed into Columbus to gain water/sewer for development, the students living in that annexed area would be required to leave their current suburban schools and transfer to the Columbus City Schools.

This argument was viewed favorably by the State Board of Education. If this became policy, it would eliminate most of the reasons people had for moving out of the City of Columbus into the suburbs. There was an uproar in the suburbs from the parents of those kids. It would also significantly curtain the demand for new homes. Not good news for those wanting to flee the city, those living in the contested neighborhoods, or, most significantly, the residential developers. So a thing called the "Win-Win Agreement" was crafted. Its major provisions are these:

All existing developments within the City of Columbus but suburban school districts would be left in the suburban school district. However, a portion of the property taxes collected on these parcels would be paid to the Columbus City Schools anyway.

Any undeveloped parcel in a suburban school district which is annexed into a suburb under the existing water/sewer service agreements would be allowed to stay in the suburban school district.
Any undeveloped parcel in a suburban school district which is annexed into the City of Columbus would automatically shift to Columbus City Schools

The local school districts and municipalities have operated under this treaty for over 20 years at this point, including at least one renewal cycle. It must be good for someone, but I'm not sure who. Certainly it affects the homeowners addressed in point #1 above. In the case of point #2, there are no homeowners. However, the owners of large parcels of farmland (who these days are often absentee owners who rent the land to local farmers) like this provision because it makes their land worth more to residential developers. Of course, the residential developers like this provision because it’s easier to sell homes when they fall into a suburban school district. Case #2 is even good for the Columbus City Schools at it allows them to collect incremental tax revenue without having to educate any incremental kids. From their standpoint, it's more like a piece of commercial property, which is the best kind of property use of all from the perspective of the municipal government and the schools (more on this later).

As for case #3, this would seem to be no good for anyone. The current landowner would have few if any developers interested in buying the land. Without a developer, there would be no one to seek water/sewer service and hence no reason to request annexation into the City of Columbus. That means no new affluent homeowners and their kids for the Columbus City Schools. Nonetheless, there is now at least one massive housing development in its first stages of construction which exactly fits this situation. What's going on? I have my theory, but first some more (excruciating) background.

Over the past couple of decades, there have been several lawsuits heard in the state courts regarding the constitutionality of the current process for funding schools in Ohio. By law, school districts have very few options relative to mechanisms for generating funds. The universal approach taken is to collect property taxes, both residential and commercial. This approach has some political problems. In the case of rural school districts, most of the property is in use as farmland. Farmers have enough of a problem making a living without being taxed out of existence by the schools. So it's very hard to get a tax levy passed in the farmlands, and it’s very hard to get the State Legislature to increase the burden on the farmers since so many of the representatives come from rural districts.

In the urban districts, the residential property base continues to erode as dwellings are abandoned by their owners and taken over by the slumlords that let the values continue to slide. In Columbus, a particularly difficult problem is erupting: many of these low rent properties are being occupied by new immigrant families who have children with limited English proficiency. So not only is the tax base eroding, but the difficulty and cost of educating the kids is escalating dramatically.

If there is commercial development in the urban district, the property taxes are often been abated as part of the deal to attract the corporation buying or upgrading the property. While these abatement deals might have provisions to provide replacement school funding, such is not always the case.

Prior to the 1970s, there was no state income tax in Ohio. But when the tax was enacted, a primary use of the funding was to provide aid to the poorer school districts in the state, predominately in the urban and rural districts. This is clearly a classic "Robin Hood" program, taking money from the wealthier districts to help support the poorer districts. In principal, I have no problems with this. But on many occasions, lawsuits have been brought by individuals and school districts in the state courts claiming that the current funding system is failing to ensure that all children get a good education, and consequently violates the state constitution. On four occasions, the Ohio Supreme Court has agreed, but not offered any remedies.

Lots of people are confused on this point. They think it is the system which the Supreme Court says is unconstitutional, and that something radical needs to be done to change the way it works. In truth, the issue is not that the algorithms are wrong (although they certainly cater to regional issues); it's that the state legislature fails to allocate enough money to fund the program to levels which the algorithms specify.

Here's a synopsis of the way the Ohio School Aid program is supposed to work:

An assessment is made of the performance of all public schools in the state. This is akin to the "report card" process, in which school systems are ranked Excellent, Continuous Improvement, Academic Emergency, etc, but is of course a little different.

The set of schools who are rated in the highest performing category are sorted by the amount of money the system spends per student each year. The N systems (I forget the number) which spend the least have their per student spending averaged together, and this number is declared to be the minimum amount that a school system needs to spend to achieve the standard of excellence required by the state Constitution. So if there are 20 school systems in the state that achieve the highest performance rating, and N is set to 5, and the 5 lowest schools spend $8000, $8100, $8200, $8300 and $8400 per student per year, then the declared minimum funding is set to $8200.

Local school districts are expected to take responsibility for taxing themselves at least to a minimum standard, which I believe is 17 mils ($0.017 per dollar of assessed property value). Let's pick an example district where these 17 mils would raise $6000 per student (from residential and commercial property taxes). This is called the "charge-off," and is deducted from the State Aid regardless of whether the local district is actually raising the 17 mils locally.So if the school district does actually raise the 17 mils, which generates $6000 per student, the state would add the other $2200 as State Aid, and the district would have $8200 per student to spend. The theory is that there are other districts which achieve excellence for this amount of money, so this school district should too.What if a school district raises more than the minimum? Let's say another school district has great support, and the community has voted to pay 50 mils in levies, which generate $9000 per student per year in funding?

Theoretically, they would receive no State Aid at all. In fact, there are no districts in Ohio which collect so much local property tax that they receive no State Aid. But some are close.You see, the money that funds the State Aid is our income taxes. In wealthy districts, which are typically the suburbs of large cities, the residents pay much more income tax than they get back in school funding. The rest of their money goes to support the urban and rural schools. In very real terms, the cost suburban residents bear for having their kids in nice schools is that they get to pay for the urban schools anyway.

Each year, the State Legislature must pass a budget which funds the State Aid for schools, plus all the other programs and obligations of the state government. This is where the Supreme Court decision comes into play: the state has been consistently failing to fund the State Aid program to the degree specified by the funding formula. In our example above, the school district is doing its duty to tax itself the 17 mils, but the state isn't holding up its end with the $2200 in aid. Maybe the state only provides $1500 in aid. Now the district only has $7500 per student to spend. If there are 1,000 students in the district, this is $700,000 less per year, and in a small district this is a meaningful amount of money (maybe 20 teachers for example).

There are a couple of 'adjustments' which make things a little weirder. Many years ago, the legislature passed a law that said when the county assessor raised the value of a piece of property, that reassessment could not automatically cause the tax burden for the homeowner. This was passed at a time when some areas of the state had a hot real estate market, and some homeowners, notably the elderly, were being taxed out of homes they had lived in for years. The mechanism of this law is that if the assessed property value increases, the millage rate applied to that property would be decreased by an amount equal to keep the dollar amount of the tax bill the same.

For example: a house had been appraised at $100,000 and taxed at 17 mils. This would generate $1700 per year in property taxes. A couple of years later, the property is reappraised at $120,000. The law requires that the $1700 tax bill not change, so the assessor would be required to adjust the effective millage rate on that property to $1700/$120000 or 14.167 mils.The weirdness is a thing which has been called "Phantom Revenue." It's just an inconsistency between the funding formula and the constant tax mechanism described in the prior paragraph. What happens is that for purposes of calculating the 17 mil charge-off, the full assessed value is used. The effect on our example house above is that the state aid formula would deduct $120,000 * 17 mils = $2040 from the aid necessary, while only $1700 in actual taxes would be collected. The difference of $340 is the Phantom Revenue. It causes a noticeable reduction in aid, but is NOT the key problem in the suburban districts.

There are other miscellaneous adjustments made to the basic funding formula to account for disproportional costs a district might have for educating kids with physical, behavioral and learning disabilities. Transportation costs can be supplemented with State Aid as well.

School funding comes from three primary sources: 1) State Aid (which we just discussed); 2) residential property taxes; and, 3) commercial property taxes. In our school district, it costs about $9000/yr to educate a kid, and currently about one third comes from each source. So what's the problem?
When a new house is built, the experience in our district is that around one school-age kid comes with it. That means $9000 in incremental cost. The house the kid lives in generates about $3000 in incremental residential property tax revenue. The state will kick in another $3000 in State Aid. BUT NO NEW COMMERCIAL PROPERTY TAX REVENUE HAS BEEN GENERATED!! This is the key to the funding shortfall, and why rapidly-growing school districts have to keep going back to the voters to increase taxes.

Folks move into the rural areas and suburbs because they like the residential nature of the area, and often resist the creation of commercial developments, especially those which can generate high tax revenues in small land parcels (e.g. multi-story buildings, or manufacturing operations). They're okay with doctor's offices and the occasional convenience store, but please nothing that looks too industrial or draws outsiders into their neighborhoods. Folks just don't understand that a residential-only community is very expensive to live in if they want all the trappings of an upper-middle class neighborhood too. Things like great schools, attractive public facilities (parks, community centers), low densities, and responsive police and fire services. The cost of having these things is lessened by designing integrated communities which have an appropriate balance of residential, commercial and public development.

One would think the municipal governments would use their power to manage this balance. As servants of the citizens of the community, their job would be to provide the services required and desired by the citizens using as few of the citizens' tax dollars as possible. The best way to do that is to attract desirable businesses that will pay substantial taxes without putting a commensurate burden on the infrastructure of the community. Certainly, a business does not add children to the school system. Mayors and City Councils who fail to attract such businesses need to be held accountable for their (lack of) performance, and replaced with competent leadership. But we also have to empower the Mayors and City Councils to limit the pace of residential development when it threatens the economic viability of the municipality AND the school system.

For whatever reason, the suburban municipal governments around here seem to have little power, or perhaps desire, when it comes to controlling residential development. I understand the point that the large landowners around the perimeter of the city want to cash in on the development value of their land, and that the large residential developers need to acquire that land and build houses on it to keep their profits flowing. But what's good for those individuals and corporations is not necessarily good for the community. Balancing that tension is not easy, and it takes leadership with guts, business acumen and great communications skills to pull it off.

But you know what the REAL problem is? It's that most of our fellow citizens won't invest the time and intellect to understand all this. While I admit that this essay is long and a bit tedious, trust me when I say it is the very much condensed version of the whole situation. Nonetheless, few of my fellow citizens will take the time to read something like this essay, or sit through a 30 minute presentation to get educated on these matters. If your point cannot be reduced to a sound bite or a couple of pictures, it's just blah-blah-blah to most folks...

... And the developers are counting on this situation. You ever hear the joke about the college professor who noticed that one of his students sat through every class with a blank stare? He asked the student if he was ignorant or apathetic. The student answered that he didn't know and he didn't care. That what Americans have become. We react to sound bites and video clips pretty much at an emotional level, forming opinions based on how much we were entertained or annoyed by the style rather than the substance.

Politicians get elected on the same basis. Once in office, the citizens are an annoyance, not the people you serve. The real customer is the residential real estate developer. No other entity stands to harvest more profits in a suburb than these guys. I'm not saying our politicians take direct bribes, but there's definitely something in it for them. Otherwise, why would they let the schools and the city government get in such financial trouble without making these developers share the burden?

There's an easy answer: Impact Fees. Remember from the analysis above that when a new house is built, there is a $3000 shortfall in funding for the school district. In the past, the only way they get fixed is to raise the property taxes on everyone in the district. So in a very direct way, everyone else in the community subsidizes the funding shortfall created every time a house is built. The great way to change this is to impose an up-front, one-time fee on the homebuyer that is their "buy-in" into the community. The fee should be the cost to build a new high school building divided by the fully-utilized population of that building. Right now that number is about $10,000. In exchange, there would be no new taxes raised to build schools. Residential property taxes would be used to fund operations, but not construct school buildings.

Here’s another oddity of school funding in Ohio: When a district puts a bond levy on the ballot to construct new school buildings, what it is actually doing is asking the community to agree to make the principal and interest payments on bonds the district will sell to raise the cash to build the buildings. Essentially, the district is taking out a mortgage on the new buildings and asking the taxpayers to make the payments.

So when a bond levy passes, the voters are agreeing to pay off that particular debt. It's a fixed amount, paying interest only during the life the bonds, then repaying the principal when the bonds mature -- just like an interest-only mortgage. Let's fantasize and say that the bonds carried zero% interest. If there are 10,000 residential parcels in a school district, and a $30 million high school is going to be built. The bond levy would specify that each of the 10,000 parcels would be taxed $100 additionally per year for 30 years to pay off the bonds. But what happens if another 200 houses are built? The answer is NOT that those folks are also taxed $100 each per year, putting $20,000 per year away in a future building fund. Instead, the same payments on the original bonds are spread out over 10,200 people, dropping the tax burden to $98 per year.

So this seems like it's a good thing when more houses are built, at least in terms of paying of the building bonds. But if the district is growing rapidly, it won't be long until other building needs to be built. Then ALL the homeowners in the district will have to sign up to pay a new bond levy, even though they have been paying off bonds for the existing schools (which their kids attended) all long.

Of course, the developers hate the idea of impact fees. They can make a lot of money in suburban areas with thousands of acres of developable land, and these fees seem like nothing more than a substantial price increase for their buyers, and they don't get any of the money!

There is another solution, which I first heard from State Rep. Larry Wolpert: An earned-income tax. Currently schools can assess an income tax if approved by voters, but the definition of income for these taxes causes our senior citizens on pensions and social security to be drawn into the net. Larry wants to find a way to let those folks live out their senior years without getting taxed into poverty while the community around them expands. Larry's proposal would place a tax only on earned income, which excludes things like pension and social security income. The thing I like about it is that once implemented, each new resident has to pay it without having to go back to the voters for approval. If property taxes are lowered commensurate with the new income tax, then current residents see little change in their tax burden, and new residents automatically get assessed their fair share. It can work.

Oh, and the line about "Developers are like Locusts." I think that neither locusts nor developers are evil. They are simply organisms which seek to maximize their own lives. They aren't out to do us harm, but they don't care if they do either. Developers, like locusts, cause damage when they aren't controlled.

That's the point.