Gadfly Bites 3/28/25—I don’t write ‘em, I just compile ‘em

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1. This op-ed published in the Columbus Dispatch commands attention for two of its many rhetorical points. First is that protections intended to keep Ohio homeowners from creeping increases in property taxes are being circumvented by numerous school districts and municipalities, via separate loopholes. Second is that “Ohio schools are in excellent financial health”, specifically because data show “school cash reserves have more than doubled in the last decade”. The author supports the proposals in Senate Bill 66 that would close the loopholes and reinforce the intended curbs on property tax growth. And Thomas Zaino should know, as he is a former Ohio tax commissioner and current executive director of the Ohio Taxpayer Protection Coalition. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/27/25) P.S. – If you’re curious at all about this issue specifically in regard to the school funding aspects, I can highly recommend Aaron Churchill’s concise (but wonky) analysis here.
   
   

2. Of course some school districts are better at managing all that money than others, as we frequently discuss in these clips. Trimble Local Schools, whose elected board approved a budget cutting measure on Monday, is something of a special case since their primary budget problem reportedly arose from an accounting mistake. However, we learn in this new piece that their deficit is now projected to be even larger than the $1.6 million mistake. The taxpaying citizens of the tiny district are rightly asking a lot of questions of their elected leaders, but at least one of those questions—“Could the district be forced to close due to lack of adequate funding?”—has a simple and ironclad answer: “Never.” (Athens Independent, 3/27/25)
   
   

3. Meanwhile, a group of parents whose children attend Cincinnati City Schools spent part of their spring break protesting state “funding cuts” for traditional district schools in front of Governor DeWine’s Queen City office. While the concept of a “cut” in relation to the final phase in of the Fair School Funding Plan may be in dispute by some folks (not your humble clips compiler, though, as I know you know), there is literally nowhere in Ohio that a GoFundMe is being run by teachers to buy textbooks for district school classrooms. Nowhere. Despite the assertions published in this piece. (WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, 3/26/25)
   
   

4. I can hear all of my long-term Gadfly Bites subscribers saying right now (happy Friday to all 7 of you incorrigible gluttons for punishment!), it is unusual for me to be as definitive about my take on these things as I have been in the last two clips. “Isn’t this the point where our humble clips compiler usually says ‘no one cares what I think’ or ‘no one asked me’?” That is typically true and, as ever, no one did ask me today nor does anyone give a fig what I think right now about funding formulae or the imperviousness of district schools to closure. However, I feel like this opinion piece from the Vindy.com editorial board really spells it out so clearly that you don’t need to take it from me—today or ever. The editors are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no criteria under which it makes sense to close a traditional district school building; even including evidence of persistent academic suckitude. Schools in that boat (and mercifully the editors do at least agree that there are lots of them) cannot be closed because many rural students would have to be bused “two counties away” to reach the next nearest school (which is categorically untrue, but why would we expect that pesky fact to bother them here?) and that these schools should instead be given gobs of additional funding until…well, without limit in amount or time. I don’t see any note of any outcome these folks would like to see either, but the implication is that these gobs of funds will somehow make the schools magically rise above whatever potential closure criteria might be offered. So, as I often say: I don’t write these pieces, I just put them together. And I am as amazed as you all when the random universe of news and opinion pieces written and published by a diverse group of reporters and editors on a given day come together so perfectly like this in a clear and coherent story spelling out what is truly going on in the Ohio education landscape. (Vindy.com, 3/27/25)

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