You Love Your Schools.
There’s a Better Way to Fund Them
Without Risking Your Home.

The facts are undeniable. We cannot wait any longer to repair this broken system. Every fiscal cycle we postpone the fix, more districts cross the line into insolvency — and insolvency means the state is legally required to intervene.

Ohio is nowhere near prepared for the catastrophe on the horizon. The solution exists. The math works. Fix it now, while we still can.

Because property taxes are the problem, not the solution. For fifty years, Ohio has funded schools primarily through property taxes — and the result is a system the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional four times. Property tax levies hit your mortgage once a month in a lump sum. They exempt renters entirely. And they create massive inequity between wealthy and poor communities.

A 1% dedicated school sales tax fixes all of that. Everyone who buys anything in Ohio contributes — renters, homeowners, visitors, businesses. The cost is spread across every purchase all month long instead of hitting your budget in one shot. Ohio already exempts groceries and prescription medications from sales tax, so the tax falls on discretionary spending, not necessities. For the median Ohio household, it’s about $20 per month. Compare that to the $200+ emergency levies that hit homeowners every 3–5 years. And here’s the number that puts it in perspective: every Ohio household is already paying about $16/month in state funds going to general-education vouchers they never voted for — projected at nearly $1 billion per year in the current biennium. We’re asking $20/month to fund your own kids’ public schools. Which one did you vote for?

This is one of the most common things people say — and it sounds reasonable until you look at the numbers. Right now, the median Ohio school district spends just 1% more than it takes in. Out of 660 districts, 405 operate within 5% of a perfectly balanced budget. These are not districts on spending sprees. They’re already running on razor-thin margins. (Calculated from ODEW FY26 Required Spring Update Financial Forecasts — median ratio of total expenditures to total revenue across all 660 reporting districts.)

The Ohio Legislative Service Commission — the legislature’s own nonpartisan research arm — reported in January 2025 that per-pupil spending rose 48.9% over the decade from FY2015 to FY2024, while general inflation rose 30.8%. (Source: LSC “School District Operating Spending” infographic, January 2025.) That gap sounds alarming until you understand what’s driving it:

Health insurance. Every school district provides health insurance to its employees. Those premiums have roughly doubled in the last decade. Schools can’t opt out — and if you’ve watched your own premiums climb, you already know this isn’t something districts can control.

Special education. Federal law requires every district to provide special education services to every child who qualifies — therapists, aides, specialized teachers, adaptive equipment. The number of students who qualify keeps growing, the services keep getting more expensive, and the federal government covers less than 15% of the cost it promised to fund. Districts have no choice but to pay the rest.

Keeping teachers. Ohio competes with Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, and every neighboring state for teachers. If those states raise pay and Ohio doesn’t, teachers leave. After COVID, districts across the country had to raise wages just to keep classrooms staffed. That’s not waste — that’s the labor market.

Fewer students, same buildings. Ohio’s public school enrollment has been declining. But losing 50 students doesn’t mean you can close half a building. You still need a principal, a custodian, a bus route, and heat. Per-pupil spending goes up mathematically even when total spending stays flat — because you’re dividing by a smaller number.

Here’s the number that tells the real story: The Ohio Auditor of State found that total operating expenditures across all Ohio public schools — not per-pupil, but actual total dollars spent — grew just 9.4% after inflation over 22 years when you exclude federal COVID relief funds. (Source: Ohio Auditor of State, Longitudinal School Finance Study, 2024.) That’s less than half a percent per year in real growth. Schools have been remarkably disciplined in total spending. The per-pupil number looks higher because there are fewer students sharing the cost.

The problem isn’t that schools are spending too much. It’s that the vast majority of their property tax revenue has been frozen since 1976 while every cost of running a district — health insurance, special education, utilities, transportation, salaries — has gone up. Inside millage (10 unvoted mills) does grow with property values, but it represents only 10–20% of property tax revenue and can’t keep pace with costs rising at 3–4% per year. A family whose income barely grows isn’t living beyond their means when groceries cost more, insurance costs more, and childcare costs more. They’re just falling behind. That’s exactly what’s happening to Ohio’s schools — except they’ve been falling behind for fifty years.

The sales tax is collected statewide and distributed through the existing Fair School Funding Plan formula, which allocates dollars based on each district’s enrollment, student needs, and local capacity to raise revenue. This means rural districts with weaker tax bases receive proportionally more support — which is exactly how it should work. The Ohio Constitution doesn’t say “fund the schools in your county.” It says the General Assembly shall secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state. The state already collects $13.7 billion in sales tax and distributes it statewide for roads, Medicaid, and public safety. Nobody says “my county’s sales tax shouldn’t fund a highway in another county.” Education is no different. Every child in Ohio is every Ohioan’s responsibility.

The court withdrew from enforcement in 2002 — not because the problem was solved, but because it had exhausted its ability to force compliance. The ruling was never reversed. The constitutional violation stands. And in June 2025, a Franklin County court added a second ruling: Judge Jaiza Page found Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program unconstitutional under the same Article VI, Section 2 that DeRolph cited. Two courts, decades apart, have reached the same conclusion: Ohio’s school funding system violates the state constitution.

Based on ODEW five-year forecasts, the timeline is not theoretical — it’s arithmetic:

139 districts serving 333,000 students will be functionally insolvent within three budget cycles. The state’s intervention mechanism under ORC Chapter 3316 was designed to handle one or two districts at a time. If legislators don’t act in this session, the first wave of state takeovers begins before the next election.

This is the biggest misunderstanding in Ohio education — and it’s not an accident. Yes, the lottery sends about $1.4 billion a year to schools. Yes, casinos send about $100 million. Yes, sports betting sends about $180 million. That’s roughly $1.7 billion a year in gambling money that is technically “for education.”

But here’s what actually happens: every time the lottery sends a dollar to schools, the legislature quietly pulls a dollar of regular state funding out. The gambling money goes in the front door. The state’s General Revenue Fund — that’s the main pot of tax dollars the legislature controls — walks out the back door. Your schools don’t get a single extra dollar. The legislature just freed up $1.7 billion to spend on something else.

Don’t take our word for it. Olentangy Local Schools — one of the highest-performing districts in the state — says it on their own website: “The Ohio General Assembly generally uses Lottery profits to offset other general funding that would be provided to Ohio school districts.” Casino money? About $66 per student per year. That doesn’t cover a single textbook.

Sports betting is the newest version of the same trick. The law says 98% of sports betting tax revenue goes to an “education fund.” Sounds great — until you read the fine print: the money is “subject to future appropriation by the General Assembly.” That means the legislature decides what to do with it. And Governor DeWine has already proposed doubling the sports betting tax — not to give schools more money, but to build stadiums.

Here’s how to think about it: Imagine your employer told you they were giving you a $1,000 bonus — but at the same time, they quietly reduced your base salary by $1,000. You’d be furious. That’s exactly what Ohio does with gambling money and schools. The “bonus” is real. The pay cut is hidden. And your total paycheck hasn’t changed.

That’s why our proposal is different. A dedicated school sales tax is constitutionally earmarked. It goes into a separate fund that the legislature cannot touch, cannot redirect, and cannot use to backfill cuts somewhere else. When we say every penny goes to schools, we mean it — because the law won’t let them play the shell game again.

Every number on this site is sourced from official state data. The $12.37 billion frozen revenue figure refers to voted levy revenue rolled back by HB 920, calculated from the Ohio Department of Taxation DTE-515 (voted millage rates) and SD-1 (taxable values), both Tax Year 2024. Inside (unvoted) millage revenue, which does grow with property values, is not included in that figure but is included in every district’s five-year forecast. District fiscal projections come from ODEW FY26 Required Spring Update Financial Forecasts filed by each district in Spring 2026 — these include all revenue sources. The 611 traditional district count matches the Department of Taxation’s records. Court rulings are sourced from Ohio Supreme Court records (DeRolph) and Franklin County Court of Common Pleas (EdChoice, June 2025). We publish our methodology. We show every district — including the 65 that show no projected deficit. The data speaks for itself.