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Superintendents, community weigh in on impacts of state's education cuts

Gov. Mike DeWine announced his plans for state budget cuts Monday. $300 million of his $775 million reduction plan comes from K-12 public education.

PERRYSBURG, Ohio — School leaders learning just how much money is going to be cut over the next two months according to Governor Mike DeWine's reduction costs. 

The amount totaling $300 million and is different for each district.

RELATED: State releases details of budget cuts for local school districts

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School districts in our area expected some kind of cuts would come to education, but not how much or from where.

According to the education's reduction plan released Wednesday, Washington Local Schools is losing nearly $700,000. It's one of the smallest cuts in our area.

Perrysburg Schools will lose more, it amounts to about $200 a student.

"For us, it wasn't a surprise. The amount was, it was more than what we had anticipated, it's almost a million dollars reduction for this current school year for us," Perrysburg Superintendent Tom Hosler said.

These cuts are coming in the last two months of the 2019-2020 school year budget.

Although Hosler and Washington Local Schools Superintendent Dr. Kadee Anstadt aren't surprised by the cuts, it doesn't make the reality of dealing with it any easier.

"It's like a cold bucket of water. All of a sudden it's very sudden and we're having to adjust very quickly. This isn't something that really 90 days ago we could have prepared for," Anstadt said. 

Both superintendents said they started looking at where they could make cuts as soon as they moved to distance learning to help lessen the blow once the budget announcement came.

"We'll start to cut building budgets, we'll start to look at all the things schools look at," Anstadt said, adding that projects funded by the recently approved levy won't be touched.

"I think one of the challenges that we face in trying to address the financial piece is we really don't know what next year is going to look like," Hosler said.

The impact that this has on schools is forcing leaders to look at where they can make cuts from their general funds.

We asked you about your thoughts on the cuts to education and we got both sides. 

Some of you told us you're not happy about it:

"Schools already don't get enough funding why can't we prioritize that," Summer Werth said.

"Somehow this doesn't seem fair to her or her children," Tammy Collins said. 

Local superintendents say the cuts were coming, and they're going to have to find ways to make up for it.

"The financial conditions are changing dramatically," Hosler said. 

"When it hits this fiscal year, it's just a little more difficult to recover from that," Anstadt said.

Others of you told us the action is necessary:

Deb Grieser said, "we can't restore what's broken and help without making cuts somewhere"

Shannon Mayes said, "this is going to happen with the total shut down."

The biggest concern is how is this going to be made up especially when schools expect more cuts in the fall; that hasn't been answered yet.

The superintendents say the silver lining in all of this is that some expenses are being saved right now with buildings not being used.

The document on the breakdown of how much money schools will lose over the next two months is available here.

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