Court Rejects Ohio Finance Plan; Revives Debate on School Funding

By Jessica L. Sandham

For the second time in less than five years, Ohio leaders have vowed to challenge a court ruling declaring the state's school funding system unconstitutional.

A Feb. 26 decision, handed down by Judge Linton Lewis Jr. of the Perry County Common Pleas Court, found that reforms adopted by the legislature last year did not satisfy the terms of a March 1997 Ohio Supreme Court ruling.

Among Judge Lewis' findings was that state officials had failed to present evidence of a net increase in state education funding for fiscal 1999, once new legislative mandates for schools were factored in. The judge first ruled that the finance system did not meet constitutional requirements in July 1994, before the case known as DeRolph v. State of Ohio went to...