The Associated Press

Columbus – Ohio’s system of funding schools is unconstitutional, the Ohio Supreme Court declared Thursday in a 4-3 ruling that orders a state response by June 2001.

Thursday, May 11, 2000

Columbus – Ohio’s system of funding schools is unconstitutional, the Ohio Supreme Court declared Thursday in a 4-3 ruling that orders a state response by June 2001.

Writing for the majority, Justice Alice Robie Resnick said the state should be given the additional time in light of progress that the governor and the Legislature have made.

But as in March 1997, the court found that the system’s dependence on local property taxes causes it to fail to provide a ”thorough and efficient” education for every child.

Justices Andrew Douglas, Francis E. Sweeney and Paul E. Pfeifer joined Resnick in again ruling that the state hasn’t done enough to fix the way schools are funded.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, and Justices Deborah Cook and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton again sided with the state.

”We acknowledge the effort that has been made and that a good faith attempt to comply with the constitutional requirements has been mounted, but even more is required,” Resnick wrote. ”The process must continue.”

The decision criticized new unfunded mandates on schools and the way funding formulas have been changed.

Gov. Bob Taft and Republican leaders in the Legislature contended that the state has drafted a successful plan to pay for schools.

Lawmakers passed a plan earlier this year to spend $4.5 billion from Ohio’s tobacco settlement to build or repair schools over 25 years.

Using part of that money, Taft has proposed his own 12-year, $10.2 billion plan to improve Ohio’s public school buildings.

In his 2001-2002 capital budget, Taft also proposed $603 million for school construction, a 20 percent increase over the last two-year budget period.

Thursday’s decision was the latest development in a case that dates to December 1991, when the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding sued in Perry County Common Pleas Court on behalf of the Northern Local School District and others.

The coalition sued on behalf of Nathan DeRolph, then a Perry County high school student. The case still carried his name, even after he graduated and went on to Ohio State University.

Perry County Common Pleas Judge Linton Lewis Jr. first found the state system of financing education unconstitutional on July 1, 1994.

The 5th Ohio District Court of Appeals in Canton overturned Lewis’ ruling a year later. After two more years of legal arguments, the Supreme Court declared the school funding system unconstitutional.

In May 1998, Ohioans overwhelmingly rejected a proposed sales tax increase that would have paid for school improvements.

Lewis again ruled against the state in February 1999, saying it still hadn’t fixed the problem.