Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Project Proposal

Imagine walking through the halls of your high school carrying an umbrella and trudging through over an inch of water while sweat runs down your face. Then imagine walking through the halls of another school with three different gyms and air conditioning. Which school would you choose? I am sure that most of you would choose the second school. But what if you didn’t have a choice? The Ohio school system is ranked at the bottom of the list when it comes to how schools are funded. In a Supreme Court case is 1991, the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding filed a suit against the State of Ohio for not providing the necessary funds to educate students. The court ruled that Ohio's school-funding process was unconstitutional. Even though state legislators tried to fix the problem, in 2000, 2001, and 2002 Ohio's funding was still considered unconstitutional.

The topic I have chosen the research is the unjust funding of Ohio Schools. By relying on property taxes to fund schools, poorer school districts are disfavored. These are the schools that need the money the most and they are not receiving it. The fact that Ohio cannot come up with a suitable way of funding schools (other than property taxes) makes me wonder what is going on in Ohio’s state government. Education should be a major issue because students are the future and without having a proper education getting an adequate job is harder. The problem cannot be solved by simple giving all schools an equal amount of money. The schools that need more money should be able to receive more money until all of Ohio’s schools are running in a suitable manor.

This topic is inconvenient because government officials talk about changing the situation but are unable to pass the legislation. Everything that the government has tried to do has been considered unconstitutional. Also, parents who have children in the school systems complain about the situation but are not willing to pay more money than they already do towards schools. I think that parents should only have to pay a little more money because there are other ways of coming up with funds to help schools.

The questions I hope to answer in my research paper are: why are Ohio’s schools so unequally funded; what can be changed in the way Ohio funds its schools in order to have all schools at the same level?

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