NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- The reality quickly set in for public school districts after Gov. Mike DeWine -- due to the economic slowdown related to COVID-19 -- announced last week that he was cutting 3.7 percent (which equates to $300.4 million) in funding to Ohio’s public K-12 schools through the end of the fiscal year (June 30).
For the North Olmsted City School District, the total reduction is $896,087 or an adjusted per-pupil reduction rate of $239.
“We knew there was going to be some financial impact as a result of COVID-19, but I didn’t expect that deep of a cut for our district,” Superintendent Michael E. Zalar said. “It’s just disappointing. The state is sitting on a $2 billion rainy day fund they’re refusing to dip into.
“If this isn’t what a rainy day fund is for, then I don’t know what it would be used for. That was built up on the backs of school districts," Zalar said.
"It’s just the same old story -- we’re in a fiscal crisis, but come and take it from public education.”
Due to the cuts, Zalar said the district is in the process of revising its five-year forecast, which will be reviewed with the Board of Education at a meeting set for later this month.
However, the superintendent said the problem regarding the forecast is it involves many moving parts. That includes the CARES Act, a federal program giving states COVID-related education funding.
“As draconian as these cuts are, we still don’t know all of the information that we’re going to need to know in order to get an accurate picture of where our finances are,” Zalar said.
“We don’t know what the federal government’s CARES Act funding is going to be for our district yet. We hope there will be some federal money that can offset these cuts at some point in the future, but even beyond that, we know there’s going to be a long-term impact on our tax duplicate.”
That includes an expected increase in property tax delinquencies, which at this point Zalar said are hard to estimate.
“It’s going to make it very difficult to put a long-term plan together,” he said.
That notion also goes for the 2020-2021 school year, which finds many districts planning blended-learning contingencies, with instruction at buildings one or two days a week followed by remote learning.
The superintendent said he expects there to be some kind of a flexible schedule that includes a blended learning model in the fall. However, Zalar said the loss of funds makes planning for such a contingency difficult.
“We’re doing the best we can to plan,” Zalar said. “We’re talking to a lot of state officials about perhaps collaborating with other districts. The details are yet to be worked out. Certainly, everything is on the table.
"We’re going through our staffing process right now, but we do expect to be back on our campuses at some point next year, so we’re going to require the same number of teachers that we had this year for the classrooms.
“There may be some areas that could reduce without having an impact on teaching and learning, as a result of being able to utilize technology better, but it’s really premature to get too specific on those things.”
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