Community schools (aka “charter schools”) were first authorized in Ohio in 1997 as a pilot project in Lucas County. The community school program was soon expanded to the “Urban 8” school districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) and then in 1999 to the 21 largest urban school districts in the state. In 2000 the program was extended to any district in “academic emergency”. With the expansion of electronic community schools, now all districts in Ohio have some students who attend community schools.
Since their inception, community school funding has occurred through the “district deduction” method. The deduction method works by first counting community school students in the Formula ADM of their district of residence. Then, funding for each community school student is then deducted from the district after the district’s state aid has been computed. Currently, community school students receive funding for the following components of the state foundation aid formula:
- Core Opportunity Aid
- Special Education by disability type
- Career Technical Education by vocational category
- Targeted Assistance
- Economically Disadvantaged student aid
- Limited English Proficient student funding
- K-3 Literacy funding
- Transportation (in some instances)
Because community schools have no source of local funding, the community school deduction is 100% of the state funding amount for each of the 8 components listed above. According to the ODE FY2015 Final #3 SFPR payment report, there were 122,063 community school and STEM school students and the total community school deduction was $942.8 million. According to the ODE FY2016 June #3 SFPR payment report, there were 119,071 community school and STEM school students and the total community school deduction was $937.2 million
Ohio’s “traditional” public school districts have been complaining about the nature of the community school deduction almost since the moment of inception of the original community school pilot project. In the past school year many districts sent “invoices” to ODE, asking for repayment of what they feel are excessively large community school deduction amounts. The reason for the discontent among school districts is fairly straightforward. When community students are included in the Formula ADM of a “regular” school district, the district only receives the state share of formula funding for each community school student. However, the community school deduction transfers 100% of the state formula amount for each student to the community school. For example, in a district with a state share of 50%, the district will lose roughly twice as much money to the community school deduction as it received in state aid for those students (it is not exactly twice as much because Targeted Assistance, Economically Disadvantaged aid, and a portion of K-3 Literacy aid have 100% state shares for all students). For many years, districts have been referring to this excess transfer amount as the “local share” of community school funding. OEPI estimates in Fall 2015 placed this “local share” of community school funding at approximately $280 million – this is about 30% of the total community school funding amount in FY15. Preliminary calculations for FY16 show a similar pattern, with the local share of community school funding remaining at approximately 30% of the total community school deduction amount.
Interaction of Community School Funding and the Gain Cap
While all Ohio school districts experience the “local share” issue described above, a second issue exists for school districts with large of community school students who are also subject to the “gain cap” aspect of the school funding formula. The gain cap is a feature of the funding formula which limits the amount of growth in funding any district can get from one year to the next. In FY16 this limit was 7.5% (with a handful of smaller funding formula components exempt from this limit). The gain cap means that in nearly 1/3 of Ohio’s K-12 school districts the computed amount of state aid that they should have received according to the parameters in the funding formula and the district’s specific characteristics was greater than the actual amount of state aid that they did receive. According to the ODE March #2 SFPR report, 185 districts were subject to the gain cap in FY16 and $591.8 million in additional state formula funding would have been provided had the cap not been imposed.
So the gain cap means that districts do not receive the full amount of state funding than the formula computes they should receive. This issue further compounded when the district has a significant number of community school students. This is because the community school deduction, as described above, removes the full amount of formula funding for each community school student, not just the state share amount. The easiest way to demonstrate this effect is by using an example. Because Columbus City School District has both a large number of community school students and is subject to the gain cap, it is a perfect example to show this phenomenon. ODE June #2 SFPR Payment data is used for this example.
Columbus City School District
FY16 Formula ADM = 70,721 students
FY16 # Community & STEM school ADM = 18,089 students (74.4% of Formula ADM)
FY16 Calculated State Formula Aid = $387,288,983
FY16 Actual State Formula Aid after Gain Cap is applied = $296,876,285
Thus Columbus only receives 76.65% of the state aid that the formula would otherwise provide.
Additionally calculations show that the total formula amount (i.e. the amount that Columbus would receive if it state share was 100%) is roughly $645 million.
Columbus’s state share index in FY16 is 53.56%. Because Economically disadvantaged aid and targeted assistance are 100% state funded, if Columbus received all of the state aid the formula would allocate without the gain cap ($387.3 million), then Columbus’s actual state share would be about 60%. However, because of the gain cap, Columbus only receives $296.9 million, which means that the district’s effective start share is really only 46.0%.
Now consider what happens after the community school deduction.
The total FY16 Community School deduction (for the 18,089 Community School students) is $142,769,545.
This means that Columbus receives a net total of $154,106,740 in state aid to educate the 52,632 students who remain in district schools ($296.9 million – $154.1 million). Thus, 26.6% of the students (the 18,089 community school students) take with them 48.1% ($142.8 million out of $296.9 million) of actual state aid.
Looked at another way, assuming that the community school students are basically similar to the students who remain in the district to be educated, the total aid amount (if the state share were 100%) for the districts 52,632 students is approximately $480 million (74.4% of $645 million). This means that effective state share for the district’s 52,632 students is only 32.1% ($154.1 million divided by $480 million).
The reason for this is that the functioning of the community school funding mechanism that deducts 100% of the state share of funding is to allocate all of the gain cap funding to the students who remain to be educated in the district. This in turn lowers the district’s effective state share even below what it would be due to the gain cap itself. As the community school deduction predates the gain cap, this is clearly an unintended consequence of community school funding. It is a serious consequence nonetheless.
As a result of the adoption in FY14 of the State Share Index (SSI) approach to determining the state and local share of funding in each school district there is no longer any debate about whether local dollars are being appropriated as part of the community school deduction. The example above also clearly demonstrates that the consequences are even larger for districts that are also on the gain cap.