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Ohio public schools had a tough 2025, losing billions in expected school funding while taking on more responsibilities from the state. Gov. Mike DeWine doesn’t see it that way.
Even though there are over 600 unique public school districts in the state, hundreds of people have spoken to us, testified at the Statehouse, or rallied for more state support.
“We continue to lose money and the district’s operating costs continue to increase,” said Parma City Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott J. Hunt.
All schools have similar complaints.
“We are not fully funded relative to the cost of educating children,” said Ann Schloss, superintendent of Elyria City Schools.
This in turn leads to stress and burnout.
“We are bleeding our schools dry,” said Joe Decker, a Columbus City Schools teacher.
We’ve been telling you all year long about the challenges we face educators like Decker we faced each other.
“I think there were 42 to 26 kids in the classrooms,” he said, referring to overcrowding.
Districts tell us they have dozens of recent regulations and fewer resources.
“Schools need to be more precise in their spending,” said House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima).
Nonpartisan research group Politics matters, Ohio found that the state has cut expected public education spending by nearly $3 billion over the next two years.
“Are we doing a good job with public schools now?” I asked DeWine in a one-on-one interview.
“I think so, but look, it’s an ongoing process,” the governor responded. “We must continue to follow them, as you say, because these are our children and this is our future.”
DeWine split from some members of his party, advocates for better school funding. He too vetoed some bills that would take even more dollars. But he still signed massive cuts to expected funding giving a billion taxpayer dollars to private schools.
“We have to give people a choice,” the governor said. “Some people find themselves in a situation where they don’t believe the school is right for their child or they don’t believe the school is doing a good job.”
Schools argue this is a Rule 22 – when districts receive less funding, they will perform worse and have less to offer. Underperforming schools complain that they cannot improve without funding.
“Taking money away from our public schools demoralizes our public schools, demoralizes our students and just cuts them out 1,000 times over and over again,” Decker said. “Looking at it day by day, it breaks my heart.”
But DeWine points to his successes, such as statewide literacy gains.
“There are a lot of good things happening with education in this state, but we need to do more, continue this process and then move forward,” he said.
While DeWine has shown that he has tried to prevent a bad situation from getting worse, he is not doing enough, Decker said.
“What difference would having a fully funded classroom make for you?” – I asked Decker.
“It makes a huge difference when you have a safe learning space like it was meant to be,” the teacher said.
But currently, most Republicans in Columbus show no signs of changing course on school funding.
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This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and are published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication on other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
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