As most of you probably know, the Ohio Supreme Court has several
times found Ohio’s school funding scheme to be unconstitutional on the grounds
that a “thorough and efficient” means of funding education, as mandated in the
Ohio Constitution, was not being provided equally to all Ohio students, and
that Ohio’s method of funding education needed to change.
“In DeRolph v. State
(1997), 78 Ohio St.3d 193, 677 N.E.2d 733, syllabus, (“DeRolph I”), this court
stated, ‘Ohio’s elementary and secondary public school financing system
violates Section 2, Article VI of the Ohio Constitution, which mandates a
thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.’ In DeRolph I, this court admonished the
General Assembly to create a new school-funding system…..”
For years the General Assembly has alternately ignored or
paid lip service to this and subsequent Supreme Court rulings and refused to do
anything to truly remedy the situation….until now. After wrestling mightily
with the problem, and through a stroke of true malignity, a solution has been
found: the easiest way to address this constitutional conundrum is obvious:
change the Constitution. Just remove the “thorough and efficient” language from
the Constitution and all will be well! No longer will the General Assembly have
to deal with those pesky Supreme Court rulings and be concerned whether the
students in Cleveland Heights and those in Lower Salem were being given the
same educational opportunities. What
could be simpler? Instead of checks and balances, we would be left with only
checks…..big fat checks from the eduformers who want to destroy public
education, sell it to the highest bidder, and pay to elect legislators who
subscribe to their pseudo-Darwinian “Let them eat cake” approach to funding the
poorer school districts in Ohio. It’s obviously their own fault if they’re
poor, and besides, there’s money to be made! Why let a few words in the
constitution stand in the way of unbridled capitalism and greed? Once all of
the schools are privatized…..well, not all. There has to be somewhere for the
riffraff to go.
Cynical doesn’t even begin to describe the situation, but
when education becomes the latest “emerging market” and students are data
points in an investment scheme, it all begins to make a certain kind of
perverse sense. But hey, that’s just me……….
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