8 OF STARK COUNTY'S 17 SCHOOL DISTRICTS MISS OUT ON AT LEAST $900,000 IN FEDERAL FUNDING. HOW ARE THESE DISTRICTS' TAXPAYERS GOING TO FEEL ABOUT THAT?

Here is the list of Stark County school districts who have cost their citizens more in local taxes they will be paying for educating the districts' children:

• Alliance City
• Fairless Local
• Louisville City
• Massillon City
• North Canton City
• Osnaburg Local
• Perry Local
• Sandy Valley Local

How much more?  At least $100,000 or more.  Probably much more.  Alliance and Massillon, in particular, because they are urban school districts which are favored by the funding source, appear to have passed up upwards of $1 million each in not participating in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Race to the Top (RttT) federal stimulus funding of local education reform.

Who is to blame.  Probably the education associations (unions) in each of the districts who chose not to participate in RttT.

The Stark County Political Report compliments the nine districts and their unions who elected to help their local taxpayers by applying for RttT funding.

The absurdity of the districts who did not apply is that under House Bill 1 (Governor Strickland's Evidence Based educational reform), the reforms mandated in receiving RttT money, RttT is pretty much duplicated in Ohio and therefore the non-applying Stark districts will have to dig up additional local money.

Couple HB 1 (and its number of unfunded mandates) with expected state funding shortfalls of about 20% and you can see Stark County schools reeling under strains of a huge financial crisis come school year 2011-12.

Ohio Representative Todd Snitchler (Republican - Lake) has been saying (is anybody listening?) that HB 1 is underfunded by about $2 billion to $3 billion dollars.

The SCPR believes he is right on the mark and should be catching the ear of Stark County's school officials.

Here is a brief video showing the viewpoint of Dayton's superintendent of schools and a education think tank representative on the significance of House Bill 1.

Note how the Dayton superintendent brings up the matter that when the Republicans were in the supermajority (in the mid-90s including Stark Republicans Scott Oelslager, John Hagan and Kirk Schuring), how the money was available to "fully fund" Ohio education, but that the Republicans failed to act.


Dayton Education Panel - Thoughts on Ohio HB 1 from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.