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Perrysburg Schools superintendent works to address Ohio schools funding

Tom Hosler spent the past 18 months working with state officials to improve the way Ohio schools are funded.

PERRYSBURG, Ohio — School funding in Ohio is at the center of debate right now as voters across the state head to the polls next Tuesday to 283 school levies.

Several say the way it’s structured isn’t cutting it and is hurting local schools.

"We're all infected with the same disease and at any given time we show symptoms of that disease in different ways," Perrysburg Schools Superintendent Tom Hosler said. 

RELATED: Perrysburg Schools facing $7 million deficit if levy fails

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It's an issue school leaders across the state are actively fighting.

Out of Ohio’s 610 school districts, several are fighting for more funding to continue educating kids. At the root of the issues, they say, is levy laws and state funding.

It's a complicated process to figure out school funding in the state of Ohio. There's a 25-page formula that calculates who gets how much. But of Ohio's 610 districts, only 107 actually get the funds from the long formula calculations.

"For a district like Perrysburg, we actually get about $4 million less than what the state says we should be getting and for a growing district that is an impossible situation," Hosler said.

But Perrysburg isn't the only school facing this challenge. On Nov. 5, neighbors in our area will vote on 19 different school levies. The funding model is one Tom Hosler says is broken, and one he is actively working to fix alongside 15 other superintendents and treasures in the state.

For the past 18 months, they've been working on what's known as House Bill 305 to change how schools are funded.

"Instead of this 25-page formula, we’ve got it down to one page,” Hosler said. “When you take a look at how it's set up, we can identify that 75% of the dollars coming from the state would go directly into the classroom."

The bill begins with the base cost of education and has add-ons for special areas like poverty, special education gifted programs and more.

"We're hoping that this leads to a conversation which can maybe turn the tide on some of these things that everybody in Ohio knows is not working," Hosler said.

State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, R-Perrysburg, said he co-signed the legislation that's in the house finance committee. While it is a bipartisan bill, Ghanbari said it's going to take some time to work through.

"We definitely have to come together, democrats, republicans, independents,” Ghanbari said. “We really need to find a solution that doesn't just benefit a select group of students. We are investing generationally in our students. This is something that we have to take a hard look at so that's going to involve a through and deliberate legislative process."

As they wait for that process, hundreds of schools in Ohio will hope their funding is approved by voters in a week.

While they work to address the funding school leaders like Superintendent Hosler also say levy laws hurt them.

House Bill 920 was approved in 1976. Essentially, it means when voters pass a levy for a certain mil they cannot raise a dollar over the amount voters approved on election day.

The problem for growing districts like Perrysburg is that as families and businesses move into town they collect the same dollar amount and now have to pay for additional students who came into the district prior to the vote. This also means they are collecting less than they intended when they went to voters. For example, in 2016, Perrysburg voters approved 16 mills for the district, but due to growth the school now collects just 13.7 mills.

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