As if there weren’t enough issues related to growth and development to discuss at the next Granville school district planning meeting, the governor’s proposed budget threatens to take $1 million a year from the district’s budget.
Details about that new challenge, an update on the proposed 600-home development in Heath that could send as many as 900 additional students to the Granville Exempted Village School District, and updates on other issues related to new housing will be presented during the planning meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at the high school.
Superintendent Jeff Brown said Thursday that the meeting will be held in the high school commons next to the school’s theater so that people can sit in small groups to talk with stakeholders and give feedback.
“It will be much more interactive” than the first meeting on Jan. 15, Brown said. “So if people want their voices heard, they should be at this meeting.”
Brown said district leaders and members of the district’s Strategic Planning Task Force will share information about the framework for the planning process and key dates in that process, such as when the district might need new school buildings.
“We’re in the planning phase, not the building phase, but planning does involve conceptualizing when we might need new facilities,” Brown said.
He said the planning, as with planning done quickly to manage education during the COVID-19 pandemic, “will be done in pencil, not ink,” because there are many possible variables and scenarios in how the 2,600-student district might grow.
For example, he said, planning should imagine how the district will respond “if we have 100 new students, or if we have 200 new students, and how do we manage that” each step along the way.
On Tuesday, Brown said, discussion leaders will give participants prompts to discuss their priorities for the district, “so we come out of that meeting with clear priorities for the Strategic Planning Task Force” to work with in helping to develop options that could be included in a strategic plan for the future. Those options will be presented during the third in the series of public meetings about the future, to be held on April 15.
“Priorities can be around transportation, academics or building configuration,” he said. “Priorities can be as broad as: How do we work most efficiently” to manage the district.
Funding undoubtedly will be a point of discussion, given the potential effects of Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget proposal and estimated cost of educating more than 900 additional students that could come from the proposed new housing development that would be within the City of Heath and in the Granville school district.
Even with property and income taxes that would be paid by residents of the new homes, Granville has estimated the need for an additional $9 million a year from other sources to fund the district – plus the cost of building new schools.
And that was before DeWine put forth his budget proposal that currently calls for an end to “guaranteed” funding for some school districts.
Brown said the “narrative we’re hearing from Columbus” is that removing the funding guarantee is a goal rooted in making sure districts that are losing enrollment don’t continue to receive a guaranteed amount of funding even as their student bodies shrink. But ending the guarantee would be a significant hit to about 30 school districts experiencing enrollment growth.
“We’re going to push as hard as we can” at the Statehouse to at least keep current state funding levels, Brown said, if not gain additional state funding to offset the cost of educating more students. Even if the guaranteed funding is restored in the proposed budget, it would not provide more money to manage the additional costs that come with enrollment growth.
Read more: Proposed state budget could hurt funding for Granville schools, treasurer says
He doesn’t expect a “bailout” for Granville’s funding challenges, but he and school board members are asking state officials for consideration of the circumstances here – rapid growth that is being driven in part by economic development projects inspired by state and federal funding incentives to corporate giants such as Intel, which is building a $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus 12 miles west of Granville and is receiving more than $2 billion in state incentives.
The proposed state budget will be reviewed by the Ohio House and Senate, both of which will undoubtedly make changes, before a final vote by the end of June. In the meantime, district officials will continue to talk with state Rep. Thaddeus Claggett, R-Newark, and Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster, about the district’s funding needs, Brown said.
“We’ve had very productive meetings with local representatives,” he said.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.