Educating kids is expensive — ask any parent, teacher or school treasurer in Summit County.
Public schools including Akron, Barberton, Copley-Fairlawn, Cuyahoga Falls, Green, Mogadore, Springfield, Stow-Munroe Falls, Tallmadge, Twinsburg and Woodridge predict budget deficits by fiscal year 2030.
The problem: Expenses are outpacing revenue.
Federal, state and local tax dollars cover staff, curricula, building upkeep and utilities. But those dollars increasingly are falling short, leaving school districts struggling to balance their budgets, said Ryan Pendleton, a former Akron Public Schools treasurer-turned-consultant. The issue compounds as districts grapple with declining enrollment — which drags down revenues — and rising costs for staff and services.
“School districts are desperate to have consistent funding from the state,” said Pendleton, now executive director for North Coast Shared Services Alliance.
Barberton Schools consolidated bus routes and instituted pay-to-play fees for extracurriculars. Cuyahoga Falls Schools cut open enrollment for this school year. Akron Public Schools has left open positions vacant — a common thread among districts — and cut back on purchasing some services and supplies.
With deficits looming, districts face a central question: What must they do to live within their means while still educating students?
There is no silver bullet, said Phil Montgomery, who sits on the Akron Public Schools Board of Education. “It is just the rising cost of doing business — and the need to do more with less,” Montgomery said.
Those rising costs have already caused Barberton Schools to hit a financial wall.
The historically working-class community southwest of Akron had been spending more than it took in since the 2018-19 school year, according to a state audit released in July. It projected a more than $1.5 million deficit for the current fiscal year and told the state it could not cut its way to solvency, despite eliminating dozens of positions — from office aides and teachers to building administrators — as part of a recovery plan previously submitted to the state.
“It certainly has put [Barberton Schools] in a position where we’re analyzing our financials and operations consistently,” said Superintendent Jason Ondrus. His district, alongside Hamilton County’s Mt. Healthy City Schools and Athens County’s Trimble Local Schools are the only districts in the state under fiscal emergency.
Of the more than 600 traditional public districts in the state, at least 79 face budget shortfalls by the 2028-29 school year — with more districts potentially hitting deficits the year after, according to the most recent forecast data submitted to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
Some school districts hope voters will support levies to help stave off further cuts. But for Barberton, Norton, Tallmadge and Twinsburg school districts, voters already rejected levies last spring. (Many of those same, or similar, measures will appear on the November ballot.) Akron Public Schools passed its first new levy in 12 years in 2024 — a combination bond issue for North High School and operating levy to fund expenses — but another new money ask could be in its future.
“Nobody’s really immune to it,” said Revere Local Schools’ Treasurer Rick Berdine. The high property values in the district’s borders of Bath, Richfield and parts of Copley have given that small school district a plump cash reserve.
Still, Berdine — and treasurers throughout the county — are preparing for a budget crunch.
Open enrollment: Public school districts in Cuyahoga Falls and Woodridge take different approaches
Two local school districts. Two ways of addressing open enrollment.
Under prior state funding models, open enrollment was a boon for Cuyahoga Falls City School District, which serves the second-largest city in Summit County. The district received dollars for each child who attended its schools, regardless of whether they lived within the schools’ boundaries or those of neighboring cities.
Now, Cuyahoga Falls schools, like nearly 200 other districts, receives a set amount of funding from the state, regardless of how its enrollment fluctuates, as part of the implementation of the state’s most recent funding formula. Meanwhile, Treasurer Kristy Stoicoiu projects a $557,000 cash shortfall next school year — a gap expected to grow year-after-year thereafter. Stoicoiu blames at least part of the financial issue on rising health insurance costs.
“Costs in general are up for everybody — you see it at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and all of those things affect us too, except we’re not receiving any kind of cost-of-inflation increase to our taxes [revenue] or to our state funding,” Stoicoiu said.
To help stem its growing budget gap, Cuyahoga Falls ended open enrollment, starting with the current school year. Stoicoiu estimated the move saved the district $500,000 to $600,000, but recognized the impact it had on families who had attended the school district for years. Only seniors were able to finish out their time in the district.
The district also eliminated more than 60 positions over two years, largely through attrition.
“Everyone, unfortunately, has been affected by this,” Superintendent Andrea Celico said.
Woodridge Local Schools, which draws students from seven communities, projects a $3.8 million deficit in fiscal year 2030. Even with the deficit, Woodridge Local Schools does not plan on stopping open enrollment, Superintendent N’ecole Ast and Treasurer Tom Morehouse said.
Still, the school district accepts few students, with priority given to families who attended Woodridge the previous school year. Open enrollment doesn’t mean adding staff to provide endless available seats, she said. Instead, if Woodridge has open seats in classrooms, families from surrounding districts are welcome to enroll.
“[School] choice is a really big deal for our state,” Ast said. ‘We get to provide a choice for families, if we’re able to, and we think that we are the choice. When you look at all these private schools, what makes any of those schools better than Woodridge?”
To stretch local tax dollars, schools like Woodridge focus on staff cuts through attrition, elimination of low-usage curriculum and changes to workers’ insurance plans.
“The state will tell you that they’re giving us more money than they ever have, but they’re also taking more money away than they ever have,” Morehouse said, referencing property tax reform efforts that bit into revenues through limits to inside millage growth and changes to the tax floor for schools.
“It’s going to cause school districts to go back to the ballot sooner, and more often.”
Residents in Cuyahoga Falls’ school boundaries will see a levy on the ballot next month — a 9.97-mill renewal that has generated funds for the district since the early 1990s. If approved, the school will remain financially sound through at least 2031.
Without it, the question becomes: What is left to cut?
“Then we start to impact students,” Stoicoiu said. “We’ve done everything we can to not do that – we want to protect our students and our classrooms, and some of those major purchases can be impacted. We’re talking curriculum, we’re talking technology, we’re talking electives perhaps, transportation.”
Deficit spending proves slippery slope
For Revere Schools, Statehouse recalculations of the 20-mill floor that now include other types of levies have lowered the district’s guaranteed minimum property tax revenue.
“We just happened to have a sizable cash balance that’s allowed us maybe a little more runway to deal with some of it,” said Berdine, the district’s treasurer. He added that the district is emphasizing a mantra of “needs, not wants.”
Vacant positions have gone unfilled, he said, and it eliminated $500,000 in expenses — money previously set aside for technology purchases and roof repairs in favor of using permanent improvement levy funds that will be available in about four years to cover those costs.
“We know we get into deficit spending … once you start trending downhill, it’s at a rapidly increasing rate,” Berdine said.
Barberton Schools hopes levy will pause further reductions
For many districts, federal pandemic relief funds temporarily delayed cashflow problems. Those funds were used to supplement services and address the pandemic’s impacts, absenteeism and learning loss, Pendleton said.
“But obviously,” he said, “the global implications of that, both as a nation and as a local school district, is very disruptive. We all delayed our levies — the state of Ohio delayed its levy cycle. We all stayed off the ballot a long, long time ago, and that cliff kept rising.
Now, Barberton Schools has started to tumble over that cliff.
Alongside pay-to-play fees — which the Barberton Community Foundation has stepped in to cover for families unable to afford — other cuts are not off the table, said Ondrus, the superintendent.
That could include eliminating extracurriculars and preschool programs, shrinking busing back to state minimums and making “deep reductions” to elective courses like art and music, he said.
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While a state commission will be convened to review the school district’s expenses and make budget cuts, the Barberton district still needs new funding — and hopes voters pass a five-year, 1 percent earned income tax levy in November. That income tax, if passed this fall, would generate about $4.75 million per year.
“We do realize property taxes are a hot topic,” Ondrus said, referencing a citizen group seeking to abolish property taxes via a ballot initiative. More than 60 percent of property tax revenue funds public schools, according to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.
“A school district doesn’t have many options as it tries to generate revenue,” Ondrus added. “We’re doing our best to listen to our citizens and try to approach this in a way that might be a little more favorable.”
Deficit spending in Akron Public Schools: ‘We need to try to get out of that’
While nearby Barberton is navigating unsure financial waters, Akron Public Schools is not far behind.
The largest district in the county is staring down a $12.7 million deficit for fiscal year 2029.
“We’ve done some deficit spending,” said Montgomery, the board member. “We need to try to get out of that. We should be getting to a break-even budget so we can preserve that [cash] reserve. But we need everybody to be on the journey with us.”
APS will have to balance its budget on spending cuts like those made earlier this year — including staff reductions — and could look at building consolidations.
If a district lets its cash reserves dwindle too far, it could, like Barberton, come under the state’s fiscal oversight.
That was the case for Coventry Local Schools, which spent nearly 20 years on the brink of emergency before it fell under the state’s control in 2015.
The suburban district near Portage Lakes saw a boom of open enrollment and innovation in the 1990s and early 2000s, allowing it to take a unique, college campus-like approach to education, Treasurer Lisa Blough remembered. Its computer lab boasted state-of-the-art IBM computers; classes focused on performing arts and college and career tracks. A parade of open enrollment students helped fund it all.
But there was not a long-term plan, Blough said.
Vendor contract costs dragged the budget down. The boost in funds from open enrollment did little to offset the additional staffing and facility costs from the boom in the number of students.
The district also received less funding from the state due to the high property values around Portage Lakes.
“My opinion is that when you grow so big, so fast, it’s hard to manage all that and balance the budget when it comes to spending what you need to pay for versus what’s nice to have,” Blough said.
The cliff came in 2015: an insurmountable operating deficit, no cash to cover it, and debt accumulated over the 20 years prior.
She compared it to an individual who uses credit cards to pay for day-to-day expenses. Eventually, that large bill comes due. In extreme cases, bankruptcy is the only way out.
Fiscal emergency was akin to that — the state paid off the school district’s debt with a plan in place for the $4.5 million loan to be repaid and its financial health recovered.
With its financial turmoil in the rearview, Blough plans to keep the district’s budget in check. Her latest spending hazard is not overblown computer contracts, but inadequate state funding distributions.
State funding draws ire: ‘Can’t pick and choose what parts you implement and update’
Regardless of how outwardly affluent some districts throughout Summit County seem, all had the same sore spot: the state’s funding formula.
The way Ohio funds its public schools has been a topic of debate for decades — an issue at the heart of a series of court cases in the 1990s and early 2000s. DeRolph v. Ohio challenged the constitutionality of the state’s school funding model and, in part, its overreliance on local property taxes (which was declared unconstitutional four times).
In 2021, state legislators passed the Fair School Funding Plan — a bipartisan effort to overhaul school funding broken down not only by the property values of a district but also by the costs to educate kids in its boundaries. It factored in instructional materials and staff professional development; higher costs for English Language Learners and students living in poverty; and the local community’s ability to pay its share.
But the state has tried to pick and choose its implementation. While the inputs for districts’ costs have remained stagnant the past four years, it is using current data to determine schools’ revenues — meaning the plan is not “fully funded” as its phased-in implementation dictated.
“The formula itself is great,” said Cuyahoga Falls’ Stoicoiu, “but you can’t pick and choose what parts you implement and update and which ones you don’t and expect it to work the way it’s intended to.”
On the other side of fiscal emergency, Coventry schools offers advice
Despite sharing a frustration with the state’s funding mechanism and looming fiscal cliffs, districts are largely left to navigate their budget shortfalls alone.
It took years for Coventry Schools to weather its financial storm.
It slashed its budget by millions, laid off staff, deferred maintenance and sold buildings. It also tried — and failed — to pass an earned income tax levy in 2019.
Two years later, the district regained its financial independence and Blough moved into the treasurer role. Spending, on the whole, had been curtailed, alongside open enrollment, but the layoffs stopped.
To the other districts facing a difficult forecast, Blough suggests they step back and find their school system’s core values — smaller class sizes? neighborhood schools? performing arts or other extracurricular opportunities? — and build a budget to protect those ideals.
“Because of our history, we appreciate that, and we make sure that we value every single dollar that’s spent,” she said. “And it’s not done without thought and careful consideration.”
