"School funding is too complicated," says Scott Ebright, spokesman for the Ohio School Boards Association. "Most people don't understand it."

Ebright said the complexity of how Ohio public schools are funded is reflected in the different types of tax issues voters can see on the ballot.

Jeni Brodsky, a Fairfield school parent, agrees.

She is campaigning to help the 9,500-student school system in Butler County avoid a fifth consecutive levy defeat.

"A lot of people don't understand the way schools in Ohio are funded," said Brodsky. "The terms for the tax issues are complicated, and it shouldn't be like that."

Fairfield's property tax increase would raise $6.4 million annually. Some of the money would be used to return bus service for high school students.

In Warren County's Kings school system, voters are deciding on a tax levy that would raise $3.2 million annually for the 3,800-student school system.

Veteran Kings Board of Education member Roger Jones explains there are three different types of levies: operating levies, bond issues and permanent improvement levies.

But Jones said it is even more important to understand what happens after people vote to raise their property taxes for local schools.

"The most critical thing people need to understand is that when they pass a levy, school districts do not later receive more money due to inflationary increases over time," says Jones.

He said state law approved in the 1970s automatically rolls back inflationary increases, freezing the amount of tax money a school system can collect during the life of the levy.

"Like everybody else, our bills and salaries go up all the time, but there are no inflationary increases - and that absence of an inflationary mechanism is the reason school districts have to keep going back to voters every four or five years," says Jones.

E-mail mclark@enquirer.com