How we got here: Elyria Schools' fiscal crisis and how the state of Ohio made it possible

When the Elyria Board of Education approved a $9 million budget reduction plan on Wednesday, Superintendent Ann Schloss said that work would begin immediately on implementing cuts, which include the loss of more than 80 district employees. In reality though, the work to keep Elyria Schools from this budgetary crisis goes back much further. District officials have been considering and debating the reduction plan for months, and have been arguing for years longer for what Schloss said is the only way to truly fix school funding in Ohio: property tax reform. "I just think it would be really good if they (state lawmakers) sat down with the educators and talked about the needs, and all the unfunded mandates that have been put down," Schloss said. "At the end of the day, they need true tax reform, not just shifting the burden from one place to another." Due to a combination of state, local and federal changes to how schools are funded, the district expects to lose more than $7 million in annual revenue over the next four years. Conversely, district costs are expected to rise by about $12 million in that same period. Without the reductions, the district could have faced a $9 million deficit next year and risked possibly expending all of its cash on hand by the 2029 school year. After two emergency operating levies failed in 2025, the cuts were the only way for the district to move forward and avoid falling under state supervision or control, Treasurer Colleen Aholt has said. Recent attempts at property tax reform by state legislatures have provided relief to some homeowners, but they have come at the expense of school districts because there has been no plan for making up the difference, Aholt said. One local example is the state's move this fall to allow counties to double both their homestead exemptions and owner occupied credits, two programs which ease the tax burden on property owners. In the past, the state has covered the difference between what owners with homestead exemptions have paid in taxes and what their properties are actually valued at. However, with the doubling of the program, which the state refers to as "piggybacking," the state is providing no such relief for the additional exemptions. Nine counties in the state opted to accept the expanded homestead credit, while four implemented the expanded owner occupied credit. Lorain County commissioners implemented both expansions in the fall, making it one of just three counties in the state to implement both tax relief programs. In 2026, the expansion will cost Elyria Schools $700,000, in 2027 it will cost $1.5 million and it will increase gradually in the following years. "Even though all the counties could do it, a majority of them decided not to do either, so make of that what you will," Aholt said. "It is good for the taxpayers, but it is bad for the schools." Schloss – like other superintendents and public education advocates across the state – has long spoken about the pitfalls of Ohio's current public school funding system, a system which the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional four times for relying too heavily on local tax revenues. In recent years, the funding source of schools across the state has fallen even more disproportionately on the shoulders of local taxpayers. As state funding has decreased, property values have risen and costs to educate students have gone up, districts are forced to ask for more and more of their funding from their taxpayers, both through higher default property taxes and increasingly large and frequent tax levies. The system which state lawmakers in Columbus produced to address these issues was the Fair School Funding plan. The plan, though now fully funded, contains a key problem which Aholt said has only exacerbated the stress on homeowners. The plan calculates how much money districts are taking in based on the latest property value reappraisals, which occurred last year for Lorain County. Property values skyrocketed across the county, meaning that residents are now paying more in local property tax, the majority of which goes to public schools. However, the plan does not use the latest numbers when calculating a district's costs, instead relying on cost estimates from 2022. As any shopper knows, inflation drove costs up substantially in the three years since those calculations were made, and the same is true for school districts. The end result, Aholt said, is that the state assumes Elyria should be able to better cover its own operations and reduces the funding it sends out. This leaves Elyria property owners paying more than ever to the schools, while the district's total revenue still falls. Elyria Education Association President Linda Aguinaga said at Wednesday's meeting that the need to make cuts was not the fault of poor planning or mismanagement by the district, but instead due to a failure at the state level. "Elyria City Schools is not facing this crisis because of irresponsible spending or poor decision making," Aguinaga said. "We are here because of the state funding system that continues to fail districts like ours… These are not abstract numbers, they represent a system being pushed past the breaking point. Most importantly, the (five year financial) forecast makes clear that state funding is the biggest driver of this decline." Aguinaga called on the board, school administration and the voters to join her union in calling on state legislators to make a change. In 2010, Ohio provided the 5th highest proportion of state funding to public schools in the country. In 2024, the state ranked 29th. In a similar period, from 2008 to 2025, the money the state gave to private schools through school choice voucher and scholarship programs ballooned from $69 million to more than $1 billion last year, an increase of more than 1,300 percent. Local fears, ideas Before the Elyria Board of Education voted on Wednesday to approve the reduction plan put forward by the administration, parents, residents and teachers spoke to share their concerns about the depth of the cuts, and ideas on how else the district could save money. The meeting was held in the Elyria High School Performing Arts Center and was attended by about 400 people. The applause from the crowd was most deafening when Board member Brent Parker served as the only vote against the reduction plan, but there was also vocal support for alternative ideas such as cutting athletics funding. Resident Levi Mohar asked if the district had considered making sports and other extracurricular activities "pay to play" in an attempt to generate more revenue for the schools. Board President Elaine Seguin seconded Mohar's question, asking why the idea had not been included in the reduction plan. Schloss said that the administration had not originally planned to investigate instituting pay to play, which charges parents of children participating in school related activities, but that the concept had been suggested and she and Aholt were now working with the athletics department to consider the possibility. Aholt said that money for athletics is held in an athletics fund while the cuts were focused on the general fund. While cutting athletics budgets or instituting pay to play would save money which is moved out of the general fund to pay for athletics, it would not be able to accomplish cuts on the level the district needed. Another resident suggested that the schools should limit or eliminate letting outside groups use school buildings for events or meetings, as the cost to keep the buildings open, lit and warm usually falls on the district. Because salaries and benefits make up around 70 percent of the district's annual budget, it was not possible that $9 million in cuts could have been reached without laying off personnel. Dekarion Wimberly, a senior at EHS, spoke to the school board about another cut that was made; the expansion of the district's busing radius from 1.25 miles to the state-mandated minimum of 2 miles. Wimberly said he had occasionally had to make a similar walk to school in the cold when he was younger, and he did not think it was safe for young students to do so. "I know this is a tough decision for you guys to make, but is there a plan to help students especially from low-income households, which is a lot of the students who go here, be able to still get to school?" he asked. Schloss said she had met with Lorain County Transit to see if the county would be able to provide any assistance in helping students who will now no longer be able to take buses to school. "No one wants to have 5-year-olds walking two miles to school," Schloss said. "At the end of the day, though, we keep getting cuts from the state and the only way to make ends meet is to cut things throughout the district. What I would like to say, Dekarion, is let's go back to what people need, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be important necessarily in how they factor in the house bills and take money away." Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.