According to Boardman Local School officials, including Supt. Tim Saxton and Treasurer Nicholas Ciarniello, a 5.8-mil additional tax levy on the May primary ballot that would generate $49 million over a ten-year period, will eliminate deficit spending of an estimated $3.4 million by the end of the current fiscal year.
      Approval of the levy, over the ten-year span, would cost the average homeowner upwards of $6000 in additional taxes for the public schools.
      In light of the financial projections, school officials say they will eliminate about a dozen employees, mostly teachers, at the end of the current school year, “regardless of whether the levy passes or not.” Those cuts will save the system about $520,000.
      If the levy fails, Supt. Saxton suggests the board will consider additional cutbacks to trim about $1 million more from the budget.
      School officials say the system has lost about $25 million in state revenues since 2012. The loss of funding did not come without warning, according to the Boardman Local School District’s 2003 audit, prepared by then Treasurer Richard Santilli.
      “The state’s 2003 budget contains legislation that reduces personal property tax revenue distributed to the [Boardman Local Schools] at a more accelerated rate than anticipated. In prior legislation, the inventory tax was to be reduced by one percent over twenty-five years. Now, it will be phased out at two percent each year over the next fourteen years.
      “In fiscal year 2002 the District collected $3.9 million on personal property. For fiscal year 2003, $3.76 million was collected.
      “The [Boardman] Board of Education is very concerned with the legislator’s decisions that have no replacement funds to balance the loss. Inventory tax reduction and the state personal property exemption phase out will have a major impact of lost tax revenue for the district,” Santilli warned.
      15 years later, that funding has been eliminated, and Boardman Local Schools are in a downward, financial spiral.
      Also appearing in a downward trend is enrollment in the district.
      According to figures supplied by the Ohio Department of Education, in 2003, enrollment in the Boardman Local Schools was reported at 4,920 students.
      By 2017, according to the most recent audit of the district, enrollment dipped to 4,119 students; or 801 students less than in 2003.
      Yet, during the same time frame, cost of operating the local system, has soared by some $9 million, to educate 801 less students
      In addition, according to audit figures, the number of certified staff members increased to 358 positions in 2017, up by 40 positions from the 2003 total of 318 certificated staffers,
      The number of non-certified staff members also increased, by 49 positions, from 259 positions in 2003, to 308 positions in 2017, according to audit reports.
      In 2003, according to an expenditure report prepared by Treasurer Ciarniello, the district expenditures were some $35.9 million.
      14 years and 801 less students later, the system’s expenditures jumped to $44.98 million.
      According to Ciarniello’s expenditure report, the two, major factors for the increase are the cost of ‘regular education instruction,’ that increased by some $3.68 million; and the cost of ‘special education instruction,’ that jumped by some $3.51 million.
      The increase in funding for special education programs appear to serve only 14.77 per cent of the system’s total student population.
      In 2003, Santilli also noted “The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in March, 1997 that the State of Ohio was operating an unconstitutional educational system, one that was neither ‘adequate’ nor ‘equitable.’ The state has not yet developed a school-funding plan that has been deemed acceptable by the Court, and ultimate resolution still seems to be some time in the future. There is concern that the state may not have the ability to fully fund the previously approved subsidies for primary and secondary education in the state budget.”
      To this day, school funding formulas for public school systems remain largely unchanged and, as the Court said, “unconstitutional,” except for the elimination of state subsidies.
      All the while, billions of state taxpayer dollars have been doled-out in the past decade to the largely underperforming charter schools that operate with little or no accountability standards forced upon public school systems.