Starving public schools
With our neighboring district, Cincinnati Public Schools, in the news recently for trying to address their budget issues, I wanted to remind our community that Forest Hills is not insulated from these issues.By 2029, 124 of 611 Ohio school districts, or just over 20%, are projected to face a negative cash balance. One must go back to the 2012 recession to find similar numbers.I won't pretend to know what specific challenges Cincinnati Public Schools faces. However, when one in five districts in Ohio are facing this issue, it seems pertinent to look at the supermajority in Columbus and their priorities in determining the budget as the common denominator.Abandonment of the bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan, routing more than $1 billion taxpayer
dollars annually to private/charter schools via vouchers, granting $1.5 billion in corporate tax incentives for data centers in calendar year 2025 alone and providing $600 million for a professional football stadium are all choices made by those who control the state budget.
When you combine these choices, it paints a picture of elected officials who do not share priorities with most Ohioans.I do not envy the choices the Cincinnati Board of Education may soon be forced to make.
Until elected officials in Columbus controlling the budget prioritize educating the about 1.8 million children attending Ohio's public schools, more and more school districts in Ohio will be forced to make the same awful choices.
Jeremy Ward, Cincinnati
The twits of Congress
Re theletters to the editor "Cook the goose," July 29: Instead of spending millions of dollars and wasting more time in Congress, it is time to focus on voting out or impeaching Congress members!
If a president or Ohio governor can only serve two terms, it is time to set the term limits for Congress members ... and have a "lie meter" set up for every time a Congress member is giving a news conference or is speaking in Congress.
Stop the "fact-finding trips to Europe" where Congress members take their families on a chartered plane, stay in luxury hotels that cost millions of dollars each year in wasteful spending.
What the twits in Congress fail to understand is that they should "lead by example" as our children are being harmed by a lack of leadership.
Gerry Miller, Galena
When is "this time?"
I read daily about new sanctions that will be placed on Russia or Iran that “this time” will be significant and bring about the desired effect to end both wars.
In addition, there are seemingly daily news reports that new strikes have been ordered on new targets in Iran that will “this time” bring about change in Iran’s behavior.
Why is it that we are repeatedly told that whatever the current sanctions or air strikes involved, “this time” they will really do something? How many “this times” do we have to hear about?
There seems to always be a workaround of the sanctions, whatever and whoever they involve.
Also, there seem to be more targets to strike that weren’t hit in the last round that “completely destroyed" all the military assets.
Now we learn there are still more. Somebody in our government needs to learn the meaning of “this time!” Maybe “this time” we need some new people running our government. Our chance to make a change “this time” is voting in November.
Chet Ridenour, Worthington
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio schools are being starved. I don't envy what's happening to Cincinnati | Letters
