Wealthy districts have lots of money, while poor districts suffer, and that's what needs to be fixed, says Democratic state Senator CJ Prentiss of Cleveland. We've got to figure out a way to get more revenue into the system in a way that addresses the issues of disparity amongst school districts. That's not going to be easy. Changes passed last year failed to satisfy the court, which in turn sent lawmakers back to the table to find a way to raise the quality of education in struggling school districts. And there's much division over how to do that.
Nobody really knows what the court is looking for.
That's part of the difficulty. That's Jonathon Entin, a constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University. But beyond that, he says, there's not much to go on. Because the SC has failed to articulate specific visions and standards, the legislature and governor have to keep struggling with this. The notion of pooling business property taxes at the state level was floated by Governor Taft just this month.