Funding Talking Points
- It’s time to invest in children – the future.
- It’s time to make the school funding system fair. That means full funding of a formula that increases the investment of state funds in local school districts; distributes those funds fairly; and reduces reliance on local property taxes.
- It’s time to increase funding for high poverty school districts.
- It’s time to give local school districts relief from using their state aid to fund private school vouchers and charter schools. The deduction method increases funding inequality.
State Takeover Talking point
- Local control is a constitutional mandate. Takeovers destroy local accountability.
- Judging school districts and labeling them failures based on high-stakes tests is a deeply flawed and unfair system for helping public education. This punitive response is based on a misuse of standardized tests. It punishes districts that are the educational home for children with a high concentration of children living in poverty.
- Four years of evidence shows changing the governance of a district does not improve education.
- As many as 10, high-poverty districts are on tap for takeover in the next two years because of failing grades on report cards. They are: Ashtabula, Canton, Columbus, Dayton, Euclid, Lima, Mansfield, North College Hill, Painesville and Toledo. The poverty rate for Canton and Columbus is 100%. Poverty rates for the other districts range between in 79% in North College Hill, and 99.9% in Ashtabula, Lima and Painesville.
- We can do better!