Sunday, September 12, 1999
NEWS ANALYSIS
Lawmakers snub urban schools
BY MICHAEL HAWTHORNE
Enquirer Columbus Bureau
COLUMBUS — Officials at the Cincinnati Public Schools may not like it, but the Republican-controlled General Assembly isn't likely to make a dramatic push to repair and replace the district's aging buildings.
Under a $10.2 billion plan floated Thursday by Gov. Bob Taft, CPS and other urban schools would get state construction aid faster than they would have under a formula set up by legislators two years ago.
However, state officials plan to continue helping the poorest districts first. Schools also would have to put up $13 billion in locally raised funds to qualify for state aid.
The amount of local funds required would depend on a district's property wealth. Because CPS is considered wealthier than most other schools, the district would have to rely on local funds to cover 80 percent of an estimated $700 million in needed repairs.
“They should be happy with what they get,” Senate President Richard Finan, R-Evendale, said of CPS and other urban districts. “The Big 8 aren't the most popular folks in the General Assembly these days.”
There are two political realities facing CPS and other urban districts: Suburban lawmakers control the General Assembly. If they pump huge amounts of cash into urban schools, those lawmakers fear they'll face the wrath of constituents who want more for their rapidly growing schools.
Lawmakers also think they have to concentrate on poor, mostly rural schools to convince the Ohio Supreme Court they've complied with a 1997 decision that struck down the way schools are built and operated. Spend more money on urban and suburban schools, the thinking goes, and there's less available for rural schools that drove the court's decision.
CPS officials said they were “disappointed” Mr. Taft's plan would force them to rely mostly on local funds to fix schools and build new ones.
They contend downtown development makes the district appear wealthier than it is. About 64 percent of the district's 47,200 students are below the poverty level, as measured by the federal free and reduced lunch program.
Tom Mooney, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, wasn't as diplomatic.
“It's utterly outrageous that they could come up with another $10 billion and Cincinnati other urban districts get virtually nothing and have to wait a long time for it,” Mr. Mooney said. “It's beyond neglect now of urban school kids. It's got to be called a deliberate policy of discrimination.”
CPS is making $20 million in budget cuts to help sell a property tax increase Nov. 2 that would be used to operate schools, not repair them, Mr. Mooney noted.
The district's construction needs are obvious. In many CPS buildings, there is peeling paint, exposed wiring, leaky roofs, broken windows, crumbling walls and other problems.
Ironically, Mr. Taft said conditions he saw in some of the state's urban districts motivated him to propose his building plan. He said he was “saddened and disturbed” that some of Ohio's schools were in worse shape than ones he taught in during a Peace Corps stint in East Africa during the early 1960s.
Asked to describe the differences between schools here and those he saw in Africa, Mr. Taft echoed the Ohio Supreme Court's school-funding decision.
“Our roofs didn't leak in Africa like they do in many of the urban schools I've visited,” he said. “We had good windows and basically sound school buildings. Overcrowded, aged or crumbling buildings are not good places for kids to learn.”
Planning for repairs and new construction for the Big 8 districts would begin next year under the governor's plan. All eight districts would get some money by 2003.
The plan is significant, Mr. Finan said, because buildings historically have been the responsibility of local school districts.
“Local school boards let these places go downhill,” Mr. Finan said. “Until the court came along, we didn't know this was our problem.”
In its ruling two years ago, the state's highest court bluntly said building and operating schools is the state's responsibility. The court is expected early next year to determine whether Mr. Taft's plan and other changes made by lawmakers complied with the edict.
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