Ohio Finance Trial Challenges 1979 Court Precedent

By Lonnie Harp

Top school officials in Ohio turned their attention last week to the little town of New Lexington, in rural Perry County, where a coalition of 500 school districts has gone to court to challenge the state's school-finance system.

The trial in Perry County Common Pleas Court, which is expected to last five weeks, is nationally significant not only because of Ohio's standing among the most populous states, but also because the lawsuit represents a direct challenge to a 1979 state supreme court ruling that gave full school-funding authority to the legislature.

"Fourteen years later, that has to be re-examined in light of precedents in other states and the wide disparities in Ohio,'' said Kern Alexander, a professor of education finance at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, who will testify as an expert witness for the...