Below is information Pickerington School Board Member Mark Hensen sent to the offices of Senator Tim Shaffer and Representative LaRe regarding the state budget for fiscal year 2026/27.
My name is Mark Hensen and I’m a board member with the Pickerington Local School District (PLSD). Yesterday, I attended a meeting with one of your aides as part of the Ohio Education Association (OEA) member lobby day. In addition to myself, the PLSD Treasurer and our two union presidents (the Pickerington Education Association and the Pickerington Support Staff Association), also met with the aide. Following are my summary and my comments regarding the meeting and the information shared. I’m not representing the board, the school district, or the other PLSD meeting participants.
State’s proposed budget will not fully fund schools
The main point shared was the need for the legislature to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP). Specifically, Governor Mike DeWine’s budget proposal does not fully implement/fund the FSFP because it did not update the base costs (salaries, support, and other operating costs) from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2024. This lack of full implementation/funding has resulted in PLSD being underfunded by about $16M over fiscal year 2026 & fiscal year 2027 ($6.8M/$9.2M respectively). Updating property values and income, but not base costs, undermines the plan and shifts funding responsibility from the state to local communities.
A $16M shortfall would have significant negative impact to our student outcomes and student learning. Class sizes for general education classrooms will likely have to increase, workloads for Special Education teachers and English Language Learner teachers will also go up (both class sizes and workloads are already too high). This has the potential to force us to consider and do many unsavory things like cut teachers, administrators, and other educators, increase our pay to play fees, reduce opportunities and programs like foreign language and “specials” classes, put off facility and technology needs and updates, do away with busing high school students, etc.
As mentioned yesterday, PLSD is already having discussions about a potential operating levy in the near future due to several factors: inflation costs over time, continued student population growth (about 1,000 students in the last 5 years and another 2,000 students projected in the next 10 years), continued staffing needs based on student growth, etc.
State may cut free meals
To exacerbate our funding situation, the state (and federal government) is also looking to change the eligibility criteria for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program. This program provides all of our students’ free school breakfasts and lunches this school year. We also received over $7.2M in disadvantaged pupil impact aide this year as a result of being in the CEP. Proposed changes to the program would result in the loss of an additional $14.4M in fiscal year 2026/27.
Additionally, I believe PLSD is the largest employer in Fairfield County with over 1,300 staff members. So, these funding issues also represent a significant economic concern, along with the more important educational impact. If not addressed by the state legislature, both the FSFP and CEP funding shortfalls – about $30Min fiscal year 2026/27 will have to be discussed in our local operating levy conversations.
School districts low on funds
I have also heard about comments from Ohio Department of Education & Workforce (ODEW) officials stating that Ohio school districts are “fat with cash” – in their cash balances. The charts I provided yesterday to your aide do show that cash balances as a percentage of school district expenditures have risen from over 20% in fiscal year 2023 to over 45% in fiscal year 2024. The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) recommends government organizations maintain at least two months
cash balance, which is about 16.6% of their annual expenditures. However, one of the charts I provided also shows that PLSD’s cash balance is around 18% – we’re not “hoarding” cash.
Actually, we’ve been deficit spending four of the past five years, hence part of the need for an operating levy. At the same time, the state of Ohio is sitting on their own significant cash balance – “rainy day” fund (Budget Stabilization Fund) of at least $3.7B, which is expected to exceed $4.2B by the end of fiscal year 2027. If fully funding our K-12 students’ education (via a viable FSFP) doesn’t constitute a “rainy day need”, then I don’t know what does.
My suggestion would be to use the state’s rainy-day fund to fully fund the FSFP. At the same time, if necessary, implement some criteria and a threshold regarding school district cash balances, and adjust school districts budgets which exceed the established threshold. This is a more thoughtful and responsible approach to funding our kids’ education than just not
addressing the problem and shifting the entire funding responsibility to all individual school districts to solve (via increased property and/or income taxes).
