Bridge Formula

Caps and guarantees are worth understanding as a mechanism, because they detach funding from whatever the formula computes. A district whose computed amount rises sharply receives the capped amount instead; a district whose computed amount falls receives the guaranteed amount instead. When enough districts are on a cap or a guarantee, the operative distribution is the prior year’s distribution, and the formula becomes advisory. inference How many districts sat outside the formula in each year of this period is not established. open

H.B. 153 kept a guarantee and changed what it held: each district’s FY2011 state aid minus the portion federal stimulus had paid for, where the Evidence-Based Model’s transitional aid had held 98% of the prior year’s aid. verified the greenbook It also began the phase-out of the tangible personal property tax replacement payments. verified A district in an industrial county experienced FY2012 as three simultaneous reductions — the formula freeze, the expiry of federal stimulus, and the reimbursement phase-out — none of which is visible in a base cost figure. inference

And this regime did not end when it was superseded. FY2020 — one of the two frozen years, under a formula that was explicitly a placeholder — is the baseline for the Fair School Funding Plan’s temporary transitional aid guarantee, and it has never been re-based. verified In FY2027, at 100% phase-in, 48.3% of Ohio districts are funded at their FY2020 level rather than by the plan, at a cost of $879 million. verified

So the Bridge formula’s last frozen year still governs the funding of nearly half the state seven years after the regime was replaced. The plan that was meant to end distribution-by- history inherited it as a floor. inference

What this repository computed # ↑ Contents

Not what Ohio publishes. Figures derived here from committed fixtures, each one citing the test that reproduces it.

The anchor chain, which is what the decade actually did # ↑ Contents

Each biennium re-read the guarantee’s anchor and left the mechanism alone. Because every base includes the previous biennium’s transitional aid term, a district on the guarantee throughout carries its earliest anchor forward the whole way. verified each act’s own formula box in its greenbook, committed at lsc-education-greenbooks.txt

H.B. 59   FY2014-15   100% of FY2013 state aid, base = FY2013 Bridge formula funding
                      + supplemental guarantee + high performance subsidy
                      gain cap 6.25% (FY2014), 10.5% (FY2015)
H.B. 64   FY2016-17   100% of FY2015; career-technical funds moved outside the
                      guarantee in FY2017 and subtracted from the base
H.B. 49   FY2018-19   100% of FY2017 — except 95% for districts whose ADM fell 10% or
                      more FY2014→FY2016, scaled from 5%. Base explicitly includes
                      FY2017 temporary transitional aid
H.B. 166  FY2020-21   no formula: each district's FY2019 allocation, formula amount and
                      state share index frozen at FY2019
H.B. 110  FY2022-     the Fair School Funding Plan anchors its guarantee at FY2020

And it terminates. The FY2013 base is Bridge formula funding, and H.B. 153 defines that as each district’s FY2011 state aid per pupil — actual FY2011 allocation over recalculated FY2011 ADM — adjusted by where its charge-off valuation per pupil sits against the statewide median, applied to current-year pupils, with a floor at FY2011 total aid net of its federal stimulus portion. verified the greenbook

FY2011      Evidence-Based Model run, net of stimulus
  ↓         H.B. 153: FY2011 per pupil, wealth-indexed, x current ADM; floor at FY2011
FY2013      H.B. 59:  100% of FY2013
FY2015      H.B. 64:  100% of FY2015
FY2017      H.B. 49:  100% of FY2017, or 95% for the fastest-emptying districts
FY2019      H.B. 166: no formula — every district's FY2019 amount
FY2020      H.B. 110: the Fair School Funding Plan anchors here, and has never re-based
FY2027      still held there, at 100% phase-in

Sixteen years, six links, and the origin is a formula that no longer exists. FY2011 state aid was computed under the Evidence-Based Model — including the charge-off valuation the index divides by, which the greenbook names as the EBM’s own adequacy-share valuation — and the act that carried FY2011 forward is the act that repealed it. A district guaranteed in every biennium since FY2012 is funded in FY2027 on a per-pupil figure produced by a regime this corpus models as superseded. verified

The one act of policy the decade contains # ↑ Contents

Re-reading an anchor is not a decision about a district; it is a decision about a date. The only time the mechanism distinguished between districts on it was H.B. 49’s 95% floor for the fastest- emptying districts — one condition, in ten years, in four acts. inference

The statewide expenditure record carries a matching signature, and deflating it sharpens the picture considerably. In constant FY2022 dollars, per-pupil operating expenditure fell from $15,226 in FY2010 to $14,173 in FY2014 — a real decline of about 7%, leaving FY2014 indistinguishable from FY2006’s $14,166. inference computed by deflator; see Per-Pupil Operating Expenditure It did not regain the FY2010 level until FY2018, by which point this regime had been running for six years.

So the decade is not, as the nominal series suggests, a period of flat spending. It is a real decline followed by a slow recovery, with the trough at FY2014. inference Whether the Bridge formula caused it or merely coincided with the stimulus withdrawal and the recession’s effect on local revenue is still not established — but the thing to be explained is now a specific shape with a datable trough rather than an absence of movement. open

The period closed with the funding levels for FY2020 and FY2021 frozen rather than computed. verified Ohio therefore entered the Fair School Funding Plan having distributed aid on the basis of history rather than need for the better part of ten years, which is why the plan’s designers treated recosting from current data as the point of the exercise. inference

The regime that has no charge-off rate, said so at the time # ↑ Contents

Ohio funded base cost by charging every district a uniform rate against valuation from 1992 to FY2009, and Local Share Charge-Off Millage left that decade’s rate unestablished because no source stated it. Nothing states it because there is nothing to state. LSC, in the H.B. 59 greenbook:

the state share index used for the opportunity grant does not result in a uniform charge-off rate. Rather, if a local share in FY 2014 were to be derived from the state share index and expressed as a charge-off of adjusted valuation, the charge-off rate would vary from 11.3 mills to 22.9 mills (excluding several outlier districts) with the statewide average charge-off being 20.6 mills.

verified crates/project

This is the decade’s substantive change and the node did not hold it. The anchor chain above is what the guarantee did; the state share index is what the formula did, and replacing a uniform rate with an index means the local share stopped being one policy judgment applied to every district and became a per-district number. Two districts with the same valuation per pupil could be charged different effective rates because the index reads income as well. The spread is a factor of two before outliers. inference

It also explains a citation this corpus would otherwise repeat: secondary accounts of the era give “20 mills”, which is 20.6 rounded and is a statewide average of a distribution. Quoting it as this regime’s charge-off rate states a mean as a parameter. verified

Whether the floor erodes # ↑ Contents

Whether the FY2020 floor is a transitional artifact that erodes as the formula grows, or a permanent feature, depends on facts the corpus does not have — but for the wealthiest quartile of guaranteed districts the FY2027 formula produces only 43% of the FY2020 level, so erosion would be slow. verified the ratio inference the conclusion