School board wrestles with federal mandate, funding concerns
- Published: April 22, 2025
At the most recent regular meeting of the school board Thursday, April 10, board members and district administrators discussed a federal directive and impending state legislation that could impact the funding of local schools if they are enacted.
Title VI mandate discussed
Superintendent Terri Holden announced that YS Schools had received notice from the U.S. Department of Education that the district was required to sign a compliance certification under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in order to continue to receive federal funding. The same notice was delivered to every public school district in the country’s 50 states and Puerto Rico.
Title VI prohibits racial discrimination in all U.S. programs or institutions, including public schools, that receive federal funding. The compliance certification letter to be signed by districts refers to its signing by districts as “a material condition for the continued receipt of federal financial assistance.”
“If districts do not certify, they will lose any current and future federal funds,” Holden said.
The compliance certification letter was precipitated by a letter from the U.S. Department of Education received by all U.S. public schools in February — known colloquially among school district administrators as the “Dear Colleague” letter, based on its opening salutation. The letter posits that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in public institutions constitute a violation of Title VI.
The “Dear Colleague” letter reads, in part: “Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them — particularly during the last four years — under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline. … The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions.”
Initially, school districts were given a deadline of April 10 to sign and return the certification; that deadline was later extended to Friday, April 18, at 11:59 p.m. At press time, an emergency motion had been filed by the National Education Association in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire, which has temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Education from action regarding the compliance certification until at least Thursday, April 24.
Superintendent Holden told the members of the school board and those present for last week’s meeting that the YS school district already complies with Title VI and does not have “a single policy that says we discriminate,” but that the compliance certification requirement puts her — and every other public school superintendent — in a “tremendously difficult position.”
“I’m concerned about the message that my signing the certification would send to my children, to my staff, to my families and to my community,” Holden said. “In not signing … my fear is that this is not limited to federal funds. Nothing has been communicated from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce that says anything other than federal funds [would be withheld] … but I’ve watched the news, and it doesn’t take much to guess what might be next.”
District Treasurer Jacob McGrath noted that, at present, the majority of federal grants the district receives fund food service programs in the schools.
Board President Rebecca Potter expressed a concern that signing the compliance certification might have retroactive effects for the district; she added that past district practices — including purchasing contracted services for the ongoing facilities upgrade project from women- and minority-owned businesses — could signal noncompliance even if the district were to sign the certification letter.
“I think it’s really important to understand that by our very actions as a district from the past forward, we do not comply, and that is something to consider in our decision to certify or not,” Potter said.
Holden said she had been working closely with legal counsel to ensure that the district was in compliance with Title VI within the letter of the law no matter the decision on the compliance certification.
“My concern is more professional, moral and ethical about what message the certification sends — particularly if there’s a next step,” Holden said.
The board did not make an official recommendation to Holden on whether or not she should sign the certification letter, though Potter did recommend that, if the intention is to sign it, the district wait until just before the deadline to do so — “in the hope that there would be some kind of stay … or halt to the process.” The board added that they may call a special meeting regarding the compliance certification ahead of the deadline.
At press time, according to EdWeek, 13 states had removed the decision from the hands of individual school districts by declaring a statewide intention to not sign the compliance certification letter: Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Massachusetts declared their intentions to not sign the compliance letter.
Sixteen states — Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and New Hampshire — and Puerto Rico have indicated that they have already signed or will sign.
State leadership in Ohio has not yet stated an intention.
Potential budget changes
As House Bill 96, the state’s budget for fiscal year 2026, heads to the Senate after passing in the House last week, public school districts — including Yellow Springs — are lamenting another apparent threat to funding schools.
The budget before the Senate includes a $226 million increase over fiscal year 2025’s provision for public schools. This version of the budget moves away from the Fair School Funding Act formula, which was slated to move into the third and final phase of its implementation this year. The Fair School Funding Act aims to address the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund public schools — ruled unconstitutional by the state in 1997 — by directing more state funding to districts with less capacity for local property tax revenue.
According to research institution Policy Matters Ohio, as reported by News 5 Cleveland, the current budget version “underfunds Ohio public schools by $2.75 billion over the biennium” by moving away from the Fair School Funding Act model.
Treasurer McGrath said during the regular meeting that YS Schools won’t lose any state funding based on the current version of the budget.
“The good news is that they changed the amount of state funding that we were receiving — it looks like the previous version [of the budget] was a loss for us, and now we are gaining $4,000 next year,” he said.
However, an added provision in HB 96 is causing concern for school districts by putting a cap on how much money districts can save at the end of each fiscal year. The bill’s provision will require school districts that carryover more than 30% of their operating budgets at the end of the fiscal year to return that money to taxpayers by reducing local property tax rates commensurate with the carryover.
Republican representatives, who control the House and who voted overwhelmingly for the bill’s passage — though, notably, five Republican representatives, including Xenia’s Rep. Levi Dean, voted against it — cite the change as a reduction in burden for taxpayers.
“House Bill 96 provides the swiftest, most significant tax relief that we can provide,” House Finance Chair Brian Stewart told the Statehouse News Bureau following the bill’s House passage.
House Democrats — who roundly voted against the bill — disagree: “Either it devastates our school districts to provide short term property tax relief randomly across the state, or just becomes a talking point and does nothing for property owners, and instead forces, almost mandates, schools to spend like drunken sailors,” Democrat Rep. Brian Sweeney told the Statehouse News Bureau.
Locally, the opinion of the school board follows Sweeney’s.
“It’s squeezing public schools to not be able to plan for more than three or four months worth of expenses,” board member Dorothée Bouquet said during a legislative update at the regular meeting.
McGrath noted that the bill’s provision does not account for districts that are already operating at minimum combined levy millage — state law sets that minimum at 20 mills — and could require districts to ask voters for operating revenue more often.
“The nature of school funding [is that districts] only get new money when they pass a levy — that means that if we just ask for the money that we need today, then next year, we’re going to have to ask for tomorrow,” McGrath said. “This [provision] is going to say, ‘We’re going to reduce it so you only have three months of cash on hand, but you also have to be balanced.’ … It’s a solution that does not really work.”
The House’s version of the budget also increases public funding of private school vouchers by $500 million — more than double the budgeted increase for public schools.
The Ohio Senate will likely pass a final version of the budget by early May.
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