Pls forgive me if the below excerpts from Toledo Blade are too far from our ListServe main concerns, and also too much an opinion on one side ... I just can't resist sharing this.  I've cut all I could of the "sheer opinion" aspect.

School funding carries no moral weight in Ohio, by Marilou Johanek,    Toledo Blade  11/12/04

BESIDES choosing sides in the presidential sweepstakes last week, Ohio voters chose sides on countless school levies.  In a sure sign of the times, Ohioans faced 286 school-funding requests from 270 districts on the Nov. 4 ballot-- the most in a general election in more than 20 years. Half of them failed. But at least the so-called moral majority gave its overwhelming consent to Issue 1 ....

    Small comfort, I suppose, to the dozens of school systems across the state looking at even more staff reductions and cutbacks in courses and extracurricular activities....

    Shame on us. What possible commodity is more precious than our children?

    ... Despite four orders to the state by the Ohio Supreme Court to find a new method of funding public schools that is not so dependent on local property-tax revenues, the unequal, unfair, unreliable funding system persists statewide to this day....

    The Ohio Department of Education calls the 50.7 percent passage rate for school levies on the November ballot "disappointing." It says providing resources to public education should be considered less a cost and more an investment that will pay big dividends toward a productive work force and healthier economy in the long run. But that perspective requires a bit of introspection and foresight, not to mention sacrifice for the greater good....

    In the meantime, lamented the Ohio School Boards Association, half the school districts whose levies passed "are just holding their noses above water and the ones that didn't are sinking." And instead of progressing academically to compete aggressively with their global peers, Ohio students are falling further behind, clearly disadvantaged by a succession of across-the-board faculty and program cuts that diminish learning potential.

    How moral is that?