Understanding HB 920

About Us District Profile COVID-19 Information Business Advisory Council Butler County Crisis Hotline Calendars

Funding, Finance, Frequently Asked Questions

OHIO: History of School Funding School Funding Basics Understanding HB 920 3 Year Cost Savings/Reductions Plan Questions & Information Graphic Facts, Questions & Answers

Pay Fees/Meals

Bullying/ Harassment/ Related Behaviors

Bullying/ Harassment/ Related Behaviors Report Bullying

Safety Reporting Info & Link ProgressBook Staff Directory School Supply Lists Community Events & Activities

Kids Voting Ballot TMS & McGuffey

Kids Voting Ballot TMS & McGuffey CMP3 DASH EdInsight Common Assessment Fast ForWord FOSSweb INFOhio My HRW Ohio Adventure Pearson Realize Renaissance Place Setting Stone Talawanda Typing Club Teach TCI TOL

Kids Voting Ballot THS E-news/School Information Alerts Health & Wellness Resources Kindergarten/Pre-K Resource Links Talawanda Tribune

Understanding House Bill 920:

No matter where you live in Ohio, regardless of whether or not you have children or whether or not they attend public schools, you will be asked to vote periodically on a local school levy. You might as well understand why.

House Bill 920, the Ohio law that outlines how public schools are funded, is complex and confusing. But it has a huge impact on all of us.

H.B. 920 was passed in 1976, during a period of unprecedented inflation. Home values were soaring every year, sometimes by double-digit percentages, and property taxes were growing at the same alarming rate. The State Legislature attempted to lessen the burden on homeowners by freezing the dollar amount paid to school districts and libraries at the 1976 level. Not at the rate or percentage, but at the actual dollar amount.

To better understand the ramifications, let’s break this down with numbers.

Imagine you own a $100,000 house and pay 2% to your local and county government and an additional 2% to your public schools in taxes each year. After three years, the value of your house is reevaluated and determined to be $120,000. The money that goes to your city and county automatically rises to $2,400 from the original $2,000 because the rate stays the same.

However, the money that goes to your public schools stays at $2,000 because the county auditor comes in and readjusts your effective tax rate from 2% down to 1.7%, as prescribed by H.B. 920.

Now imagine that this goes on for 10 or 20 years. After a while, your house has increased in value up to $250,000 and your local government now receives $5,000 in taxes annually. Because your rate stays the same, cities and counties are able to go years, decades even, without asking for a tax increase.

But your school taxes have stayed at $2,000, now just eight-tenths of one percent (0.08%) of the value of your home.

Meanwhile, everything from teacher salaries to textbooks to gas for school buses has gone up in cost over that twenty-year period, but schools are not receiving a single dollar more in tax revenue. And no matter how conservative or efficient districts are with taxpayer money, they simply cannot keep up with those day-to-day cost increases without asking for additional revenue from a levy.

Jayne Geneva, a longtime Cleveland Heights resident who is also a lawyer specializing in small business and real estate law and a school-funding activist, says, “We, as a school district, cannot raise any more money if we don't add more millage to our tax burden. The dollar amount will always remain the same. Period.” She reiterated that repeat school levies are not a sign of inefficiency, waste or lax oversight on the part of districts. They are a direct result of state law.