Superintendent of Schools Mark Freeman made the following statement at the meeting of the Board of Education on August 9, 2005.

The State of Ohio has once again failed its children.

As Bryan Christman points out in his current Treasurer’s Report in The School Review, the State’s new budget has eliminated important sources of revenue for schools without any provision for permanently replacing the funds. The State has cut special education funds, which are already woefully inadequate to support the provision of mandated services. And the State has not rectified, but has actually worsened, the “phantom revenue” problem, resulting in even more revenue losses.

At the Federal level, the story is much the same.

The State and Federal governments profess to be providing tax relief and cutting spending. What they don’t acknowledge is that they are merely pushing responsibilities down from the Federal and State levels to local school districts, counties, and municipalities. The State and Federal governments may choose not to fund their mandates, but local school districts may not choose to ignore them.

The end result is this: Despite four Ohio Supreme Court rulings mandating a reduction in schools’ reliance on property taxes, this state budget in fact increases it.

Mr. Christman has projected that the total loss to the Shaker Heights schools will exceed $4 million annually.

The Board of Education had already announced its intention to seek an operating levy in 2006. That will still be necessary, but I do not believe it is realistic or prudent ask for enough millage to maintain the status quo in light of the state reductions.

Accordingly, we will have to reduce expenses further, a very difficult task since we have over the past several years taken aggressive steps to cut non-instructional spending. There is not much of a margin left.

The only upside to the state budget is that we have enough time, if we start now, to make the necessary adjustments in an orderly way that maintains stability and quality for children. We have already adopted many cost-saving practices and developed processes for identifying further potential savings.

While it is impossible to make reductions of this magnitude without affecting services to children, we will do everything possible to protect our core instructional programs.

At the same time, the Board and senior staff will continue to be relentless in efforts to change the disastrous course the Ohio General Assembly has set for our state’s public schools.

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