Opt In Funding

School fund­ing is a big prob­lem in Ohio.  For as long as I can remem­ber there has been a sys­tem that relied on the pas­sage of levies dis­trict by dis­trict every year or two.  Those dis­tricts that reg­u­larly pass levies have money, and those that don’t pass levies strug­gle.  One prob­lem with this sys­tem is that even though there may be say 5,000 peo­ple who would be will­ing to pay a lit­tle more, if 5001 peo­ple would not be will­ing to pay  the result is there is no new money for the schools.  It is an all or noth­ing sys­tem.  I under­stand the need to have con­sis­tency across a school dis­trict for long term bud­get­ing and plan­ning pur­poses, but why do we have a sys­tem that ignores the will­ing­ness of a large per­cent­age of peo­ple to pro­vide finan­cial support?

For short term needs, why can’t peo­ple “opt-in” to fund schools regard­less of the opin­ion of the major­ity of vot­ers?  A vol­un­tary levy.  After all if you voted that you would be will­ing to pay a lit­tle more, why wouldn’t you then do so?  This would be par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing if it were some­how tax deductible as well — thus there would be some eco­nomic ben­e­fit to this as well as an altru­is­tic one.  Not sure how you would struc­ture this, and I am pretty sure that it vio­lates some part of the state con­sti­tu­tion, but I will put it out there any­way.  Want to save 2 teacher’s jobs?  Opt-in.  Want to save sports?  Opt-in.  Want your schools to have music and art this year? Opt-in.

You could have the tra­di­tional all or noth­ing vote sched­uled just like it is now.  Then, in the event that it does not pass, those who elect to do so could move for­ward as if it actu­ally passed.  Do it through face­book, as a pay­roll deduc­tion, via a quar­terly check, or as part of the annual tax process — what­ever.  Surely this would be bet­ter than turn­ing our kids into door to door sales­peo­ple ped­dling mag­a­zines, candy, can­dles, wrap­ping paper, and other un-needed goods which are bought mostly out of oblig­a­tion and guilt to raise more money for schools.  Fur­ther­more, you could reach out to busi­nesses, alumi, grand­par­ents, rel­a­tives, friends, and oth­ers out­side of the dis­trict and ask them to opt in too.

Would this fix the big sys­temic prob­lems of school fund­ing?  Nope.  Would it raise needed cap­i­tal for schools that are strug­gling to sur­vive?  It might.  Why not try?  Opt-in.