DeRolph and Ohio School Funding

Ohio's school-funding fight is the oldest unresolved question in state politics — the constitutional backdrop to every education argument heading into the 2026 election. Four times the Ohio Supreme Court told the Ohio General Assembly its funding system was unconstitutional. The legislature never fixed the tax base, wrote a bipartisan formula to do it, then declined to fully pay for that too.

DeRolph v. State

In 1991 the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding — representing more than 500 districts — sued in Perry County, arguing that funding schools mainly through local property taxes locked in gross inequity between wealthy and poor communities. In 1994, Judge Linton Lewis Jr. ruled public education a fundamental right and found the system failed Article VI's promise of a "thorough and efficient system of common schools." Between 1997 and 2002 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that the formula was unconstitutional, repeatedly ordering the Ohio General Assembly to stop leaning on local property wealth.

The state's answer was to do the opposite. Lawmakers cut the state income tax — once nearly a third of state education revenue — and pushed more of the burden back onto local levies. Report figures rank Ohio near the bottom (46th) for equitable funding distribution. The court eventually released jurisdiction without the structural fix it had ordered ever being made.

Phantom revenue

The formula's cruelest mechanic: when property values rise, the state assumes a district can raise more money locally and cuts its state aid to match. But a district can't actually collect that theoretical revenue without passing a new levy at the ballot. When voters reject levies — increasingly common — the district is left with an unfunded gap the state doesn't cover. Rising home values on paper become lost classroom funding in fact.

The Fair School Funding Plan

In 2021, the biennial budget (HB 110) enacted the Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), built over three years by Republican Rep. Bob Cupp and Democratic Rep. John Patterson. It finally calculates a real base cost per pupil — 60% classroom instruction, 40% student support (nurses, counselors, mental-health staff) — and measures a community's capacity by both property values and resident income, a fairer read of local wealth.

The catch was built in from the start: the legislature chose to phase the formula in over six years rather than fund it at once — and then froze the inputs. The 2026–27 budget keeps computing base costs on outdated 2022 salary and price data. With post-pandemic inflation, real 2026 costs run far higher; the Legislative Service Commission and House Finance chair Brian Stewart estimate that updating to 2024 data would cost an additional $1 billion to $1.8 billion statewide — money the state declined to spend.

Who this hits

A single district shows the gap: Federal Hocking Local (FY25) was owed $3.47 million under a fully funded FSFP but received $3.25 million — a ~$220,000 shortfall feeding a $350,000 deficit and the loss of 7 teaching positions. Multiply that across high-poverty rural and urban districts and the constitutional inequity DeRolph named is still running. The House GOP's 2026–27 budget also capped district operating-budget carryover at 25%, forcing auditors to refund reserves above that line — reserves districts say they hold precisely because state funding is unreliable and levies fail.

Why it matters in 2026

• Legislature. The Ohio General Assembly decides whether the FSFP is restored on current data or left frozen — and whether the carryover cap stands. Those seats are on the ballot.
• Governor. Candidates split between fully funding the formula to ease reliance on property taxes and a "results-first" posture that leaves the phase-in gap in place — the same budget that starves the formula funds near-universal vouchers.
• The courts. DeRolph is the precedent the Vouchers Hurt Ohio suit leans on — the same Article VI duty to fund one thorough-and-efficient public system.