By Greg Denecker
Bluffton School Superintendent

The first semester has come and gone, and our students and staff are settling into the second semester. As always, our students and staff are working hard to maintain and exceed our Excellent with Distinction rating on the Ohio Department of Education report card.

Specifically, our staff is working on the new Academic Content Standards (known as the Common Core) that have been passed and adopted by 46 states.

Toward those efforts, we have been approved as a Race-to-the-Top Grant School, which means we will receive $25,000 per year over a four-year period in order to phase in the new standards and incorporate technology into our teaching strategies.

As a result, we have been sending staff members for professional development opportunities and conducting in-house, half-day training sessions in order to efficiently transition staff and students to the Common Core and its assessments, which should be in place for the 2014-2015 school year.

Last year, the district absorbed several positions in an effort to off-set state cutbacks totaling over $400,000. This resulted in a number of staff members being reassigned to new roles and teaching assignments. I am thankful for their hard work and dedication in these new roles.

We will see in the near future if there will be a new funding formula for schools or if this process will be put off for another year. Our state has not had a real funding formula since the late 1990s.

The current funding formula amounts to the following: a district receives the same amount it received in the previous year along with a 1% or 2% decrease.

However, in the 2011-12 school year, our district withstood a 10% decrease, which equates to a loss of $400,000. In the 2012-13 school year, we stand to lose an additional $150,000 in Tangible Personal Property tax.

Please remember that the Tangible Personal Property tax was eliminated in order to persuade businesses to invest and move into Ohio. The funding lost through the TPP tax was supposed to be replaced by the Commercial Activity Tax or CAT tax.

Unfortunately, this past year the state changed the percentage of the CAT tax earmarked for schools from over 70% to around 50%. This resulted in the aforementioned $150,000 loss in revenue from the state per year for our district.

It is also important to note that Ohioans are being taxed 20% less in state income taxes than they were a decade ago, which is one of the main reasons why Ohio is currently unable to fund schools at its previous share of local/state monies.

This change in philosophy in Columbus is forcing public schools to rely more heavily on local tax dollars. With that said, we will continue to be as fiscally responsible as possible in order to stay off the ballot for new money for as long as we can.

As always, those in the school district take great pride in the fact that Bluffton is a great place to live, to work, and to learn. I would like to thank the students, staff, and community for their dedication to this school system.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns about the district. Either stop in or call me at 419-358-5901.

This column is part of the recent Bluffton school newsletter. To read the entire newsletter open the attachment at the bottom of this file.