The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Strickland calls education plan ‘huge success’

Medical helicopter called after two-car accident
2/6/12
County issues fewer new vendor licenses
2/6/12
Boehner says regulations stopping growth in the economy
2/6/12
County candidates to speak at Tea Party forum
2/6/12
Obama for America opening office in county
2/6/12
> More headlines

By Lindsey Hilty, Staff Writer 1:30 PM Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Educators should be excited about the new education plan passed by the state, said Gov. Ted Strickland, urging leaders to be “enthusiastic.”

“I think it’s a huge success,” he said. “I think the good news is that when many states in America are seeing actual reductions in school funding, here in Ohio we are seeing increases,” he said. “Now those increases come from federal resources and state resources combined. The average school district in Ohio during the next two-year period will see an increase of somewhere between 5.5 percent. It is true we are cutting slightly, funding from state resources, but when you combine that with federal resources — which, by the way, I went to Washington and fought for —most schools in Ohio will receive an increase in funding even though we are in the middle of a recession. That I think is a significant accomplishment.”

In Butler County, the average increase in funding was 2.3 percent.

Strickland said he got rid of the residual budgeting model, where schools got whatever was left over, and made education funding a priority based on an evidenced-based model.

“Our approach is to identify what the evidence tells us is necessary to have a quality education and then committing ourselves to funding that,” he said. “It will be phased in over time. We can’t do it overnight, nor should we try to do it immediately. This is an important transformational change and we need to do it carefully and responsibly.”

If the plan is followed, he said the state will phase in programs over 10 years, assuming 61 percent of the total cost of education.

This first biennium, he said districts have a year to digest the plan and to prepare. The second year they must start implementing all-day kindergarten.

“The state will be a responsible and reliable financial partner with the local schools to make sure as the model is phased in that the state resources are there,” he said.

And while he can’t guarantee other governors will follow his plan, he said as long as he retains office, education will be a priority as well as the funding to back it up.

“I guess I can understand why some people are perhaps a little skeptical,” he said. “There have been a lot of promises made in the past and those promises have not been kept. Even in the midst of this recession, we are keeping our commitment to education. I would hope that these educational leaders would see this as an opportunity to actually take advantage of the support they are getting and enthusiastically move to give what I believe this will provide to Ohio. I think if we do this and we do it correctly, we will have among the most progressive systems of education in the entire country. There are a lot of parts to this plan that go well beyond funding.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5067.

Share this article