Governor Mike DeWine is not embracing a school funding reform idea the leader of the Ohio House threw out earlier this week.
Speaker Larry Householder (R-Glenford) suggested lawmakers pool local tax dollars in a fund that the state can redistribute to districts based on their capacity to generate tax revenue. But DeWine notes Reps. Robert Cupp (R-Lima) and John Patterson (D-Jefferson) have been working on their own school funding reform plan.
"I’m old enough that I have been through every proposal for school funding that anybody could imagine," DeWine said. "And many of them have great merit. I think we just wait. Cupp and Patterson have put a lot of work in on this, and I just think we should wait and see what they come up with."
It’s estimated Cupp-Patterson would cost the state $1.5 billion dollars on top of current education funding. Ohio’s school funding system was ruled unconstitutional in 1997, yet the state has not addressed the system’s over-reliance on property taxes.
