Ohio voters around the state overwhelmingly rejected property and income tax hikes requested by local districts to fund K-12 public schools.
Only 24 of 66 local school district property and income tax levies passed, according to a count from the Ohio School Boards Association based on preliminary election results.
The figures include both new levies and the renewals of old ones. On new funding requests alone, voters approved one in four proposals. Tom Hosler, president of the Ohio School Board Association, noted in a statement that voters approved roughly 3 in 4 renewal requests, which don’t raise people’s tax rates.
“Renewals are holding, but new asks are harder,” Hosler said. “That’s not a lack of support for schools; it’s the reality families are facing. Voters are making careful decisions, and much of that is outside the control of local school districts.”
There’s no immediate answer for what the schools do now – several are waging legal and political fights for more support from the state.
But in the meantime, program or payroll cuts are likely.
“If you don’t have more money coming in, something’s gotta go,” said Rep. Sean Brennan, a Parma Democrat and former teacher who leads the Democratic minority on the House Education Committee.
His district has seen a high school and elementary torn down after local levies lapsed.
“It’s unfortunate that children are going to be the casualties of budget cuts,” he said.
The specifics of the proposed taxes vary by place. Take Paulding County, in Northwest Ohio, where a 53%-47% vote killed a .75% income tax requested by the school board, which said its buildings were 20 to 70 years old, with expensive roofs, HVAC units and boilers in need of repair and replacement.
In Meigs, in Southeast Ohio and one of Ohio’s poorest counties, voters rejected a 1% earned income tax levy by a 66%-34% split. Board members said the money was intended for operational and transportation costs, plus utilities, fuel and supplies.
The school funding slump stands in stark contrast to Ohio’s libraries – voters approved 12 of 14 library levies, according to the Ohio Library Council.
It’s a sharp change since last November, when voters approved 66% of the school levies that came up, according to the OSBA.
This suggests voters – amid a growing, Republican-backed political effort to fund private education for all students, which critics say comes at the expense of public schools – are losing their electoral patience for funding public education via tax hikes at the ballot box.
The election comes as citizens have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures in a viable, albeit longshot effort to abolish property taxes in Ohio.
Bill Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, said in an interview Wednesday that state officials have put local school boards in an untenable position. They starve them of state funding, he said, forcing them to ask voters for money directly during both a broader affordability crisis and a season of already skyrocketing property tax rates.
“Boards of education don’t put levies on for the fun of it. They put levies on because they have a serious need,” he said. “The failures certainly don’t help the kids.”
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State lawmakers weigh in
House Democratic Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn largely agreed. He attributed Tuesday’s results to two factors: the state starving public education of the money it needs, leaving schools overreliant on local property taxes; and voters hitting a breaking point during a cost of living crisis in the U.S.
“To me, the message is we have to stop funding so much of local public services like schools, police and fire on the backs of local homeowners,” he said.
The election results show that voters are fed up with recent property tax increases and unsatisfied with the quality of their public schools, said Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Lake County Republican who chairs the finance committee.
He said throwing money at schools stuck in an old way of thinking won’t solve any problems. And he called for the consolidation of K-12 schools, which has been seen as a third rail in politics given communities’ sensitivity to seeing their schools shuttered.
“Something is gonna have to give at some point in the future, we may be at the very beginning of that right now,” he said.
Rep. Brian Stewart, chair of the House Finance Committee, said school boards are learning a lesson that lawmakers too had to learn the hard way: voters are furious about their property taxes.
It’s time, he said, for schools to think about cost-cutting ideas like winnowing administrative bloat, reducing their cost share of employees’ pensions, and avoiding “arms races” to build newer and fancier buildings.
“I don’t think residents believe that schools in general are really tightening the belt the way residents are,” he said.