Am. Sub. H.B. 96 (2025) — FY2026-27 Budget

It takes the phase-in to 83.33% in FY2026 and 100% in FY2027 — completing, on paper, the six-year schedule the plan was designed around — while holding the base cost inputs at FY2022 levels rather than refreshing them. verified the act’s own list of changes opens “Increases the general phase-in and DPIA phase-in percentages from 66.67% in FY 2025 to 83.33% in FY 2026 and 100% in FY 2027”, and the LSC greenbook: “The budget retains the use of FY 2022 data for the various statewide average salary and spending inputs” The Governor’s executive proposal had explicitly frozen base cost at FY2022 levels, and the enacted act carried that forward. inference

Both dials are the general and DPIA percentages moving together — the two the statute writes separately, and the only year they have differed is FY2022. verified

The precedent for the other choice is recent: H.B. 33 refreshed the inputs from FY2018 to FY2022 two years earlier. verified Freezing was a decision against an established practice, not an omission. 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 two dials have to be read apart to read the act at all # ↑ Contents

A budget that advances the phase-in to 100% while freezing the input year produces a number simultaneously describable as full implementation and as a real-terms reduction, and both descriptions are arithmetically correct — they differ in which parameter they hold fixed. Resolving the argument requires the phase-in percentage and the input reference year to be separately addressable values with their own series, which is what FSFP Phase-In Percentage and FSFP Base Cost Calculation are.

What it does besides the two dials # ↑ Contents

Besides the phase-in and the input year, the act:

• Rewrites the DPIA count, freezing economically disadvantaged ADM at FY2025 and blending it with directly certified ADM 75/25 then 65/35. DPIA falls $84.5m then $31.8m. See FSFP Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid.
• Repeals supplemental targeted assistance ($52.5m to 36 districts in FY2025) and gifted professional development ($2.1m).
• Establishes three supplements: base funding, enrollment growth, and per-pupil performance.
• Raises the minimum transportation state share 41.67% → 45.83% → 50%, and cuts career awareness funds from $10 a pupil to $3.
• Rewrites the JVSD base cost state share into per-pupil form — not onto the district method, and it changes no percentage. See FSFP JVSD State Share of Base Cost.
• Changes what the Tax Commissioner certifies — the median federal adjusted gross income of a district’s residents in place of the total. Recorded here as a change to the local capacity blend; it is not one, and the blend still reads both. verified
• Codifies the community school equity supplement, cutting it $650 → $500 → $400. It is paid to site-based community schools only. See FSFP Community School Equity Supplement.

All are in the act’s own “school financing system calculation revisions” list. verified

Item 9 amends a certification duty, and this node read it as amending a formula # ↑ Contents

The act’s ninth listed change “[r]equires the Tax Commissioner to certify the median federal adjusted gross income of a district’s residents … instead of the total federal adjusted gross income of residents as under prior law”, which reads as replacing one income term with another and is not that. The section it amends is R.C. 3317.021, the certification duty. R.C. 3317.017, which is where the local capacity blend lives, is word for word identical on its income terms across all three enactments of the plan — H.B. 110, H.B. 33 and this act each carry an aggregate term at (A)(2) and a median-times-returns term at (A)(3), each weighted 0.20 against valuation’s 0.60. verified crates/project/tests/what_the_tax_commissioner_was_never_asked_to_certify.rs

Reading the certification section turns the item around. R.C. 3317.017(A)(3) has required, since the plan was enacted, the district’s median federal AGI and the number of state tax returns filed in it, both “as certified under section 3317.021”. Until this act, R.C. 3317.021 certified neither: its division (A)(5) named the total federal AGI and the median Ohio AGI, and no division named a count of returns. For four years and two budget cycles a fifth of the local capacity blend rested on a certification that did not exist in law, and what item 9 does is supply it. verified

It supplies it by substitution rather than addition, so the gap moves rather than closing. R.C. 3317.017(A)(2) still takes the total federal AGI “as certified under section 3317.021”, and R.C. 3317.021 no longer certifies one. The new returns count at (A)(6) is also dated to FY2026 and FY2027 where (A)(5) beside it is permanent, so the two halves of one product expire on different schedules. verified

Nothing in what districts were paid turns on any of this: the department computes both terms and crates/local-capacity reproduces its published per-pupil capacity for 609 of 609 districts. The item is a fact about what the text authorizes. verified

The enacted foundation totals # ↑ Contents

Traditional districts $8.15bn in FY2026 and $8.26bn in FY2027 — annual increases of $32.5m (0.4%) and $109.0m (1.3%). Community and STEM schools $1.33bn and $1.40bn, up 4.8% and 5.0%. JVSDs $539.1m and $566.9m, up 8.4% and 5.2%. verified LSC greenbook The department’s own payment reports carry $559.1m and $591.2m for the JVSDs — 3.7% and 4.3% above the greenbook, which is a budget-time score against a payment report and not a disagreement. verified crates/dispersion/src/jvsd_funding.rs

Item 7 rewrites the JVSD state share and changes no percentage # ↑ Contents

The act’s list describes item 7 as a change of method, and at the level of the percentage it is a restatement. It does not put JVSDs onto the district method: the half-mill charge-off stands, against the districts’ twenty-mill local capacity measure. And because base cost per pupil is aggregate base cost over the same base cost enrolled ADM that divides the charge, the ADM cancels — the per-pupil form computes the number prior law computed, on all 49 districts in six years on both sides of the amendment. What it moves is the ADM the share multiplies: from that three-year average onto current-year enrolled ADM, worth $10.2m in FY2026 with 36 of 49 districts better off. verified crates/dispersion/src/jvsd_funding.rs See FSFP JVSD State Share of Base Cost.

The traditional-district growth rate is the number to hold beside the phase-in. A budget that completes a six-year implementation raises the districts’ foundation aid by 0.4% and then 1.3%, which is below inflation in both years — the arithmetic of a phase-in that interpolates toward a computed amount priced at FY2022 salaries while enrollment falls. inference

Figures from earlier stages of the bill still need care: the House-passed Budget in Brief describes bridge-formula funding of $11.24 billion in FY2026 and $11.49 billion in FY2027, which belongs to a proposal rather than to the enacted act. See the stage caveat in LSC Budget Analysis — H.B. 96 (FY2026-27).

The House bridge plan is the counterfactual the act was chosen over, and it is priced # ↑ Contents

The House passed a bridge formula instead: every district and community school held at FY2025 aid by a guarantee, with prescribed increases above FY2025 halved. Contemporaneous analysis reports its foundation increases FY2025 → FY2027 as $179m (2.2%) for traditional districts, $80m (6.3%) for community schools and $38m (7.6%) for JVSDs — $297m against the executive proposal’s $149m. verified Fordham Institute — "Ohio House puts the brakes on Cupp-Patterson", whose implied FY2025 bases of $8,136m, $1,270m and $500m sit on the greenbook’s $8,117.9m, $1,270.3m and $497.2m, which is what makes the two stages comparable rather than two different years

school type            FY2025      House-passed        enacted     enacted - House
traditional           8,117.9    +179   (+2.2%)   +141.5 (+1.7%)          -37.5
community and STEM    1,270.3    + 80   (+6.3%)   +128.5 (+10.1%)         +48.5
JVSDs                   497.2    + 38   (+7.6%)   + 69.7 (+14.0%)         +31.7
total                 9,885.4    +297   (+3.0%)   +339.7 (+3.4%)          +42.7

The enacted act spent $42.7m more than the plan it replaced and gave traditional districts $37.5m less. The whole difference, and $37.5m besides, went to community schools and JVSDs. verified That is the fact the phase-in reading obscures from either side: an act described as completing a six-year implementation for districts moved money away from them relative to the proposal that was described as abandoning it. inference