School levy in Barberton inevitable

By BOB MOREHEAD
BGNN senior staff writer

The Barberton Board of Education had a special meeting Jan. 21 and voted for three resolutions of necessity.

The resolutions ask the county fiscal office to certify what each of three levies would collect: 7 mills, 9 mills and 11 mills. The board will look at those numbers and pick one of them Jan. 28, sending it to voters in the May primary.

Barberton City Schools are in a more than $9 million hole starting in July, a figure that took taxpayers and board members alike by surprise. Treasurer Craig McKendry resigned and is on administrative leave, using up accrued paid time off, until August.

Federal cuts, including the complete dissolution of the Department of Education, hit districts hard across the country.

This was compounded in Ohio by the General Assembly’s failure to renew the Fair School Funding formula. The board knew they were going to have to go for a levy this year. Then, in October, the extent of the damage surfaced. “Mistakes were made,” the board said.

Ryan Pendleton, a treasury consultant at the Shared Services Alliance, an educational service center Barberton Contracts, said the damage was worse yet.

“Lawmakers in Columbus passed property tax reform,” Pendleton said.

This was aggravated by a 13th payment last year for employee health care, due to insufficient funds on hand to cover expensive claims.

“This adds up to about $2 million,” Pendleton said. “That puts your bottom line at closer to $11 million in the red.”

He said he expected that figure to grow by the time the hammer drops next summer.

Pendleton said there were errors in forecasting, which he did not elaborate on; they are still auditing the books to narrow that down. But more than forecasting, the cause was an error in foresight.

“If you take the entire state as a single school district, we were levy-imminent in 2019,” Pendleton said. “But then the pandemic hit. Everything ground to a halt.”

Barberton and most other districts got relief money called “ESSER” payments, for Elementary and Secondary Schools Relief. This money paid salaries and funded programs. Everybody knew it was temporary but Barberton and more than 40 other districts in Ohio waited too long to come up with a post-ESSER plan. The last of that money left the bank early last year and suddenly, Barberton was on a precipice.

Barberton is not in a state fiscal status officially, yet. Pendleton said it is inevitable and he thinks Fiscal Emergency, the highest classification, will come in early July. In Fiscal Emergency, the elected board becomes spectators. A state-appointed commission takes over. Typically, one of its first actions is to strip a district down to the bare minimum required by law; the commission has total control of the personnel roster and the checkbook. It must approve every expenditure and all must be within the recovery plan put in place at the beginning of the takeover.

Pendleton said the average time to emerge from Fiscal Emergency is about 40 months.

Even if a levy passes, it won’t save the district from a takeover. The first collection won’t come in until 2027. Instead, a portion of the money would be used to repay state advances on the district foundation payment, which must be repaid within two years, collections coming out immediately.