According to figures released from Ohio’s Office of Budget and Management, Highland County’s five public school districts stand to lose a little more than $1 million in state revenue due to Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget cutting measures that were announced Tuesday.
The next day, the Office of Budget and Management identified how much money each school district would lose as part of the budget cuts.
Plunging state revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for the $775 million cutback, DeWine said, which will take place in the next two months.
Of that figure, $355 million for local school district operating costs will disappear.
The entire list of Ohio school districts and the amount of the cuts each will face can be viewed or downloaded by going online to: https://archives.obm.ohio.gov/Files/News_and_Events/Press%20Release/K-12_Education.pdf.
Locally, superintendent Tim Davis said the Hillsboro City Schools will have a little more than $391,000 in funding cut from the state. He said the reduction will come out of the general fund, but will affect the district in many ways as the current fiscal year comes to an end.
“We are very concerned with how this COVID-19 pandemic is going to affect our budget and income moving forward in the next couple years,” Davis said.
Quincey Grey, superintendent of Greenfield Exempted Village Schools, said her district is facing a $271,000 shortfall that represents a 1.78 percent reduction in state aid. The Greenfield district will have to absorb the revenue reduction since, she said, there are only two months remaining in the fiscal year.
Superintendent Brett Justice of Lynchburg-Clay Local Schools said his district was going to be shorted about $163,000 due to the state reductions.
He felt the Lynchburg-Clay schools could weather the funding cut since he, the treasurer and the school board had been anticipating the budgets cuts and had been conservative with the budget.
The remaining two Highland County school districts — Fairfield and Bright Local — will each have state funding reductions of about $124,000 and $129,000 ,respectively, bringing a loss of $1,077,763 to the Highland County schools.
Of the six counties that border Highland Colunty, Adams County will lose $710,156, Brown County $1,042,308, Clinton County $1,350,864, Fayette County $864,456, Pike County $635,013 and Ross County $1,573,395.
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
