The Observation Deck

The following memorandum was contained in an email dated May 6, 2011, at 4:56 PM, from OSBA, OASBO, and BASA to School Board Members, Superintendents, Treasurers and other School Business Officials entitled, "Budget Bill Clears the House — Gifted Spending Requirements Added at 11th Hour!":

http://ealerts.osba-ohio.org/msgs/947.html

Hey Matt,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It sounds like great news! I cut and pasted this memorandum here to save people the work of clicking on a link on a Friday night. My question follows.




To: School Board Members, Superintendents, Treasurers and other School Business Officials

From: Damon Asbury, OSBA — (614) 540-4000
Barbara Shaner, OASBO — (614) 325-9562
Tom Ash, BASA — (614) 846-4080

Date: May 6, 2011

Re: Budget Bill Clears the House — Gifted Spending Requirements Added at 11th Hour!


Amended Substitute House Bill (HB) 153 was voted out of the House late last night along party lines. While the debate on the House floor was long, very few amendments were added to the bill.

One provision affecting school districts, proposed by Rep. Ron Maag (R-Lebanon), was the addition of an amendment that would reinstate gifted education spending requirements. Gov. John Kasich’s original proposal had eliminated the Ohio Evidence Based Model provisions, including gifted education reporting and spending rules. The House amendment would use fiscal year 2009 gifted funding levels and require that districts fund gifted programs accordingly. Our organizations will be including opposition to this provision in our testimony to the Senate Finance Committee next week.

The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled testimony on the education provisions of the budget for Wednesday, May 11. Invited testimony will take place in the morning, with “interested party” testimony on education beginning at 1 p.m. Below is the official schedule. The committee is expected to hold hearings the following week for general public testimony on the bill.

Our organizations plan to testify the afternoon of May 11, and we will provide you with copies of our testimony at that time. School district representatives wishing to provide testimony on the bill are encouraged to do so the week of May 16. In the meantime, if you have questions about the substitute bill, please feel free to contact us.


COMMITTEE NOTICE

Date: Wednesday, May 11
Time: 9 a.m.
Room: Richard Finan Hearing Room (Room 126, Senate Building)
BILL SPONSOR TITLE STATUS
Sub. H.B.153 Rep. Amstutz et. al. State Operating Budget for FY 2012-2013 Sixth hearing

Cynthia Johnson, superintendent, The Ohio State School for the Blind 9 a.m.
Scott Schaller, interim superintendent, Ohio School for the Deaf
Richard Hickman, director, Ohio School Facilities Commission

Stan Heffner, interim superintendent, Ohio Department of Education 10 a.m.
Dr. Robert Sommers, director, Governor’s Office of 21st Century Education

K-12 education interested party testimony 1 p.m.

K-12 education interested party testimony 7:30 p.m.
*if necessary, at the discretion of the chairman

*Dates and times are subject to change at the discretion of the chairman*



From the memo:

"Our organizations will be including opposition to this provision in our testimony to the Senate Finance Committee next week."

It's great news to me that this amendment reinstating "gifted education spending requirements" was proposed-- and by a Republican!

My question is about the sentence in bold from the memo above. Is the OSBA intending to oppose this amendment? This is the Ohio School Board Association right? They oppose funding gifted programming?

My experience with gifted programming in Lakewood has been very good. I've had the privilege of watching the students who graduated from our second/third grade (now defunct and replaced with third grade only and moved to Emerson) fourth/fifth gifted classes at Grant, who are now at Harding middle school, with some of the work I've done with the paper on the Kid's Page. To witness the confidence, maturity, and belief in their own powers of on-their-feet thinking and interacting is completely gratifying. These are the kind of thinking, contributing citizens that any city would be proud to have had a hand in educating.

I'm very pleased that the State of Ohio might rethink their plan to defund gifted programming.

Why would the Ohio School Board Association oppose it?

Thanks for helping bring some clarity here.

Betsy Voinovich

Betsy,

The following is the email that I sent to OSBA this morning in response to your inquiry:

Matthew John Markling wrote:As you know, I am the President of the Lakewood City School District Board of Education.

I received a question from a constituent regarding the following phrase in your memorandum of May 6, 2011, entitled, Budget Bill Clears the House — Gifted Spending Requirements Added at 11th Hour!:

“Our organizations will be including opposition to this provision in our testimony to the Senate Finance Committee next week.”

The constituent asks, “Is the OSBA intending to oppose this amendment? This is the Ohio School Board Association right? They oppose funding gifted programming? … Why would the Ohio School Board Association oppose it?”

I am receiving many questions regarding gifted funding so any speedy clarification you can provide would be appreciated, greatly.

Thank you.

The following is the response that I received shortly thereafter:

Ohio School Boards Association wrote:The opposition is not to gifted education per se. It is to this last minute requirement that will restricts the ability of school boards and districts to choose how to allocate their resources and instead, directs their spending to a specific category at a time when the state is providing even fewer revenues to districts. This provision was also included in an earlier bill (HB 30) that purportedly sought to eliminate mandates, but added gifted education. Our opposition is based on the principle of local control that flows throughout our legislative platform.

[NOTE: The 2011 OSBA Legislative Platform can be viewed at: http://www.ohioschoolboards.org/legislative-platform.]

I have learned to not speculate on budget bills until everything is finalized because things are always in a state of fluctuation.

Stay tuned.

Matt