When Ted Strickland came into office he said he should be considered a failure as Governor if the school funding issue wasn’t rectified under his watch.
Well, not only has it not been rectified, but his only plan to address education screwed up the model to distribute funds to school districts by $1 billion. Yes, that’s a “b”. As in “billion”.
Ohio’s new school-funding formula underfunds teacher salaries and benefits and could need more than $1 billion a year added if it is to properly pay for education.
That was a recommendation today from a subcommittee that says state leaders should increase the teacher-salary figure in the funding formula developed last year by Gov. Ted Strickland and legislative Democrats.
[…]
The funding formula, called the “evidence-based model,” contains more than two dozen components to pay for what Strickland says will be a constitutional funding system. But two are the most critical in deciding how much money schools are supposed to get: the teacher salary and a poverty-based index number that is multiplied by that salary figure.
[…]
Unlike the current formula, which uses a median teacher-salary figure, the subcommittee said a more accurate number is to take the average (arithmetic mean) of all individual teachers.
[…]
Richard Petrick, vice chancellor for finance for the Ohio Board of Regents and head of the subcommittee, agreed the new number is more accurate.
“We were not asked to assess the budgetary implications,” he said. “This is a better reflection of what the cost of the model is.”
So one of two things happened.
Either Ted tried to pull a fast one on us in an effort to lower the cost of his proposal. Or his plan was screwed up.
That means once again we have to pick between “unethical” or “inept” when defining Ohio’s Governor.
Awesome.
