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Financing of schools still not acceptable

When the legislative dust clears sometime this week, the reliance of Ohio's public schools on property taxes will not have changed.

The new budget to be signed by Gov. Bob Taft will have increased state spending on schools. That will lower the percentage of each district's budget that comes from property taxes.

But the system will remain the same, preserving the possibility that the next two-year state budget could increase the portion coming from real estate taxes.

And it perpetuates the need for school districts to operate with a millage vote looming almost all the time.

When the Ohio Supreme Court found unconstitutional the state's method of funding public schools, part of the decision pointed specifically to an overdependence on property taxes.

In its first attempt to solve the problem, the Assembly simply added money and fiddled with the distribution formula.

The court said that wasn't enough, handing the matter back to legislators.

The second attempt has been nearly the same as the first -- approving more state aid money to schools but not reforming the basic method.

The justices soon will be faced with either:

• 1) Sending the issue back to the Assembly again, with more stringent guidelines, or
• 2) Backing down on their original reasoning, and accepting the school funding method as constitutional, just because more state money has been added.

The second alternative would be neither right nor desirable.