Ravenna seek to pass school levy, avoid further fiscal oversight from state

By India Gardener/Kent State NewsLab

Ravenna City Schools is asking the community to support a $3.25 million, five-year emergency levy to support staffing, programs, services and extracurriculars.

Ravenna is one of several school districts in Northeast Ohio that have recently seen levy attempts fail, having not passed one since 2005. 

“Let’s say my salary in 2005 was $30,000. My salary in 2024 is still $30,000, but in that timeframe, everything from an expense perspective has gone up,” said Connie Bennett, co-chair of the Ravenna Levy Committee. “Salaries have gone up, wages have gone up, and benefit costs have gone up. Our expenses to keep the school district running have gone up. All those things have gone up and we’re trying to pay expenses on a salary from 2005.”

According to the Ohio Department of Education, public schools in Ohio receive funding from three main sources: the state, the federal government and local property taxes. While the state provides a significant portion, it’s often not enough to cover all the district’s needs. 

According to the Ohio State News Bureau, inflation and rising real estate prices in the 1970s led Ohio to pass legislation limiting property tax increases. Now, as property values rise, school funding does not automatically increase. But levies allow communities to vote on whether to raise local taxes to provide extra school funding.

When a levy doesn’t pass, the district has to make difficult choices about where to cut back.

“We’ve made considerable cuts to the district, including staffing reductions, over the last three years,” said Ravenna interim superintendent Ben Ribelin. “We’ve let go of about 30 teachers, staff members and administrators. This year, we even cut high school busing, so no [grade] nine through 12 students are being bused.” 

There’s an exception for students whose Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) specify busing or if they’re enrolled in one of Ravenna’s joint vocational schools, Ribelin said. 

In May 2023, Ravenna voted down a $6.9 million, five-year extra tax levy. The yearly revenue from that initiative, which would have started in 2023 with the first payments due in 2024, would have been $2,674,000 per year.

In March 2024 the district tried to pass a levy of the same size. It failed again. 

As a result, “we were staring at a deficit — at the end of next year, about $3.3 million — when we first started in July and August,” Ribelin said.

The Ravenna City School District was placed under fiscal caution in June. Ohio’s Director of Education and Workforce can declare fiscal caution if a district’s five-year forecast reveals conditions that could lead to fiscal watch or emergency. 

When a school district faces fiscal watch, the state warns that it’s at risk of running out of money or facing serious financial trouble. Fiscal emergency means the state believes the district can no longer manage its finances on its own, and the state steps in to oversee its budget.

In addition to cuts to programs, staff layoffs and limited resources for students, Ravenna could face additional state oversight if the tax levy does not pass. 

“If [the] Ravenna school district does not pass the new tax levy, the district has the potential to fall under additional fiscal oversight in May of 2025,” Bennett said. “So where we feel that is going to progress is potentially a fiscal emergency. When we go into fiscal emergency, the decision-making process will no longer be in the hands of the district staff or the board. It will go to the state.’”

The November levy would cost Ravenna homeowners around $291 per year for every $100,000 in appraised home value. According to Zillow, the average Ravenna home value is currently just under $200,000, meaning the levy would cost the owner of that home $582 per year.

“One of our goals with this campaign has been education because we realize that people view levies as something that isn’t essential,” said Laurie Wunderle, a Ravenna parent and the director of operations for the Raven Packs, a volunteer-run organization including parents and community members that ensures Ravenna students have reliable access to food. “Though they’ve been deemed unconstitutional, levy funding is still the prescribed means of funding schools in Ohio.”

Raven Packs helps students who are food insecure. Ravenna offers free breakfast and lunch to all students via a program for school districts with large numbers of low-income students, which means that at least 25% of its students come from families receiving funds from programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  

“This is our fourth time going to our voters,” Bennett said. “The community support has been overwhelming this time around. We have received a lot of positive feedback [and] we’re getting more volunteers to help spread our message.” 

They’ve hosted three community meetings and gotten positive comments from parents, she said. 

“These kids are the future workforce, the future leaders, the future civically engaged citizens. Investing in their education is not just this isolated school play,” Wunderle said.

This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.