To the editor:

The nation may know East Palestine for the toxic train derailment that upended our lives, but I know our community as the best place in the world to raise a family. I’ve brought up five children here, four have graduated from the East Palestine City School District, and one is still a student. I believe in the schools so much, that I have served on the school board for the past ten years.

After all that our kids have been through over the last two years, I cannot believe some politicians in Columbus want to further harm our schools. The budget passed by the Ohio House of Representatives would shortchange Ohio public schools the next two years — money these districts cannot afford to do without.

Our school district has not passed a new property tax levy in more than 20 years; we do receive a small amount of funding from a local income tax. About 60% of our district’s $12 million budget comes from the state.

Our board has worked hard to be good stewards of the public’s money and provide the best education and programming on our shoestring budget. Our district has lost several great teachers to other districts in part due to our budgetary constraints. Our teachers work extremely hard for our students, and we cannot afford to lose any more teachers. It’s not fair for the teachers or the students to continue asking them to do more with less.

Ohio’s school system was declared unconstitutional four times by the State Supreme Court because it over relies too heavily on local property taxes, which disadvantages communities without high property values like ours.

In 2021, after lawmaker finally took action to make it right, but passing the Fair School Funding Plan in the 2022-23 State Budget. The bipartisan plan was created by educators, policymakers and finance experts. It uses a formula to calculate the actual cost of educating students of all backgrounds and abilities in Ohio’s big cities, rural communities, suburbs and small towns. It finally began to fix our unconstitutional school funding system that over-relied on local property taxes and disadvantaged districts with lower property values. Overall, the House Budget will underfund Ohio’s public school system by $2.75 billion.

Some politicians in Columbus claimed they didn’t have the funds for Ohio’s public schools. But in that same budget, they chose to hand over $600 million to the billionaire owners of the Cleveland Browns to build a new stadium and to spend $432 million on private school tuition.

The state budget bill is currently in the hands of the Ohio Senate. Our State Senator, Al Cutrona (R-Canfield), sits on the Education Committee. His district spans 31 school districts in Mahoning, Columbiana and Carroll Counties.

If the Fair School Funding Plan is fully implemented, schools in his district will receive an additional $109 million they were promised. The House Budget will shortchange these same schools by $101 million, according to Policy Matters Ohio. Let’s make sure Sen. Cutrona knows we expect him to fulfill the promise lawmakers made and fully fund our public schools. Our kids deserve that.

Brian C. Moore,

Member East Palestine Board of Education,

East Palestine