Cincinnati Public School District could lose out on $15 million from the state of Ohio. The district's Treasurer Jennifer Wagner says she looked at the state funding formula, and compared the most recent payment with one from a year ago. She suspects it's because residential property values have gone up.
“The state share is in reverse of; so when values go up, our state share goes down because we become wealthier across the state,” she told the school board Monday evening. “I just didn’t expect it to be that big.”
Wagner says it's nothing to panic about, but something to keep an eye on.
Finance Committee Chair Brandon Craig says it shows how ridiculous the state funding system is.
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“Every two years it’ll be even more crazy because different legislatures will make different priorities to how they want to do that,” he says.
Craig points out Cincinnati Public Schools already had to make cuts because federal pandemic aid ended.
“Because there’s going to be really, really hard decisions to make in next year’s budget. We took a lot of fat out of the budget. We took a lot of things out of the budget just to get to where we are this year,” he says. “And unfortunately nothing gets cheaper the next year. It’s not the reality, so that’s why it’s even more important for us to have that conversation early so we can be prepared to make those hard choices earlier.”
Craig says even though property values in the district have increased, the students aren't any richer.
