The North Royalton School District recently learned that they may be facing a possible financial hit, compliments of the state legislature. The state’s biennium budget, which was adopted earlier this year, included a change in it’s EdChoice scholarship program that has added the North Royalton District, as well as other well-to-do districts in their program.
The EdChoice Scholarship program offers scholarship to parents of students in underperforming public schools and for low income students. The program was established in 2005.
According to the Ohio Department of Education, “the EdChoice Scholarship Program provides up to 60,000 state-funded scholarships to students who attend low-performing public school buildings. The scholarship must be used to attend private schools that meet requirements for program participation. The EdChoice scholarship amount is currently $4650 for grades K-8 and $6000 for grades 9-12. EdChoice will pay either the scholarship amount or the private school’s actual tuition amount, whichever is less. The scholarship amount covers tuition ONLY. Parents and guardians still may have to pay registration fees, material fees and other similar types of fees. Families who qualify for low income status do not have to pay any tuition that is not covered by the scholarship. However, if the private school’s tuition is higher than the EdChoice Scholarship amount and if the family does not qualify for low income status, the family may have to pay the difference.”
So why has the North Royalton District been included in this? As part of the budget legislation, the criteria for becoming an eligible school district changed. “Schools can be added to the EdChoice designated public school list for a variety of reasons, including complicated formulas that consider deficits in graduation rate, K-3 literacy, value-added progress scores or performance index ranking in the bottom 10% of the state,” said Gurka. “North Royalton High School was included on this list based on overall value-added report card grades in the years 2017-18 and 2018-19. We believe the criteria for EdChoice designated public schools should be based on achievement scores, not value-added. The value-added score reflected on district report cards are representing a three-year average for the district and/or building, not the progress of the single school year being reported on. If this was based on last year’s value-added score alone, we would have received an “A”, and North Royalton High School would not have been designated an EdChoice school ” The number of the eligible schools list has jumped from about 40 in the state for the 2018-19 school year to 139 this year. That number for the 2020-21 school year explodes, with the expansion of criteria of districts. The list, published by Ohio Department of Education shows over 1,200 – 70% of the districts in Ohio.
For North Royalton, that number of students that it has estimated totals about 175 students, according to North Royalton School Superintendent, Greg Gurka. “We’ve looked at the number of students who are currently in private high schools and in 8th grade.” Those students will be in grades 9-12 next year, which are the students who are included for the North Royalton District on the list published by the Ohio Department of Education. “The new budget bill froze school budgets for the next two years. At the same time, students became eligible for district-funded EdChoice vouchers. We were unable to forecast or prepare for these substantial budget losses and now face even more uncertainty in our budget,” stated Gurka in a recent letter to the community on the subject. Ultimately, these are not the only students that could be impacted. “Every student in grades 8 – 11 who would be assigned to attend North Royalton High School is eligible to apply for this voucher and go to a school that is designated as a receiving school,” said Gurka. “The number we used is students who historically have attended private schools.”
The North Royalton School District has estimated that these changes could cost the district about $775,000 per year. For each student that takes the scholarship, the district would lose $1,500 from the state foundation aid and $4,500 from their own income that is generated by North Royalton tax payers through levy income. In essence, the state is taking locally approved taxes and giving it to some parents to pay for private schools. “When the levy went on the ballot, it said North Royalton City Schools,” said North Royalton City Schools Treasurer, Biagio Sidoti. “I have a problem with that, that the money is going elsewhere, whether it be community school, a charter school, a private school, you name it. I have a problem with that, that the money is not being used for what the community voted those funds for.”
Parents can apply for the next school year, starting in February. Gurka said state legislators have been contacted on this matter. He hopes that the legislators will amend the legislation before the February application period. He noted that “the Board of Education and I are working with our legislators and school associations to offer solutions to this situation.”
By GLORIA PLEVA KACIK
Contributing Writer