Strongsville Superintendent Addresses Loss of State Funding

STRONGSVILLE, OH - In a letter to the Strongsville community on Friday, school Superintendent Cameron Ryba addressed the possible loss of state funding and how it may impact the district. Specifically, Ryba spoke about the loss of the Tangible Personal Property (TPP) tax reimbursement funding.

The TPP taxed railroad property, general business, telephone and telecommunications and has been repealed by the state. However, revenue from the TPP made up a large chunk of many districts' tax base. Ryba joined several other school districts, including nearby Solon, in addressing the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Primary & Secondary Education on the issue.

For Strongsville specifically, Ryba says the loss of TPP-related funds could blow a major hole in the district's budget. In his testimony to the subcommittee, he said that Strongsville, in this fiscal year, receives $857,432 in TPP reimbursement and $2,252,656 in TPP supplement dollars. The district is slated to lose both those forms of funding, or 25 percent of their state funding under the new budget.

"Under the Governor’s 2015 budget and the current biennium budget under review, our District is set to lose both the TPP reimbursement and supplement dollars, as well as incur a 5% reduction in core aid funding in fiscal year 2018. This amounts to a $3.5 million reduction of state funding dollars in just one year. These dollars do not include the loss of roughly $600,000 in TPP funds already removed by the state during the 2015-16 school year," Ryba told the community.

Ryba says that if something is not done, the Strongsville residents may be forced to generate a 3 mill property tax levy to fill the "massive hole left based on these decisions." He added that a 3-mill levy would only cover losses from the state and the district would need to come back to taxpayers for inflation purposes and other funding losses.

"We cannot continue to achieve the vision of our Governor and the expectations of our legislature and community if the decisions made at the state level alleviate those very opportunities we have been challenged to create through the continued erosion of the state's financial obligation to appropriately fund and support public education," Ryba said in his testimony.

How The District Has Responded

As funding from the state has gradually declined, the Strongsville School District has tried to get leaner. That has meant cuts through attrition. In 2009, there were 212 additional staffers in the district versus FY 2017. The district has also eliminated six school buildings since 2010 and repurposed another building. The district has utilized more tactics that are projected to save money and you can read more about them in Ryba's testimony.

Ryba is now asking the public to help put pressure on the Ohio Congress to rectify the loss of state funds. In his letter to the community he makes an impassioned plea for community members to write their local representatives.

When the tax was originally repealed in 2005, $1.2 billion was being sent to school districts throughout the state via TPP funding, the Columbus Dispatch reports. Governor John Kasich has gradually cut into that funding source, until now when many districts believe all TPP funding will be phased out, without any reimbursement from the state.

“It is because of this long-standing reliance on these significant TPP dollars that we remain highly involved with any tax policy or funding change as there are many Ohio public school districts that will be financially exposed if the TPP supplement and reimbursement funding is eliminated through the current TPP phase-out,” Tim Pickana, school treasurer in Solon, one of the state’s highly impacted TPP districts, told Ohio lawmakers during the hearing on March 7. “We want to continue the dialogue toward a more comprehensive and long-term solution to the TPP issue that preserves necessary and once local resources for schools and students.”

Pickana believes the legislation is far from set in stone.

“The legislative budget process is just getting started and we were encouraged by the committee members’ interest and engagement during the hearing,” Pickana said in an emailed statement. “They showed a keen understanding of this complicated issue and the dialogue was robust. There is no easy one-size-fits-all answer, but TPP districts statewide are engaged in the process to help develop a workable solution that doesn’t harm communities and students.”

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