Funding Program
10 nodes · relator (ufo)
A separately-authorized initiative that moves education money outside the base formula. It binds the state, a recipient, and usually a district whose funding is affected — a scholarship or voucher, a facilities assistance program, a competitive grant. It is a Relator rather than a bare edge because the arrangement carries its own identity and history: an eligibility rule, an appropriation line, an administering body, a per-pupil amount, and in several cases its own litigation. It is kept distinct from revenue-stream because a voucher is not a channel of money to a district but a diversion away from one.
Nodes
| Autism Scholarship | The oldest of Ohio's special-needs scholarships, established in 2003, letting a parent buy a special education program from an approved provider rather than take one from the resident district. The outlier of this channel on every axis except size. |
|---|---|
| Auxiliary Services | The largest channel of state money to Ohio's chartered nonpublic schools that is not a scholarship: $166.8 million in FY2025, divided among nonpublic pupils and spent on a statutory list of secular services. Older than every voucher in this corpus. |
| Classroom Facilities Assistance Program | Ohio's school construction program, paying a share of building and renovation costs with the state share set by district wealth. The clearest direct response to DeRolph in the funding structure, and invisible in every operating per-pupil figure. |
| Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program | Ohio's first voucher program, created in the mid-1990s for a single district. Its significance is national: in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris the United States Supreme Court upheld it against a federal Establishment Clause challenge. |
| EdChoice Expansion Scholarship | The income-based statewide voucher, made universally available by H.B. 33 in 2023 with the award scaled by family income rather than eligibility gated by it. The largest change to Ohio's scholarship channel in its history. |
| Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools | A federal pandemic grant that bought services for chartered nonpublic schools through public agencies from FY2022 to FY2025: $285.4 million over four years, about a third of what Category 3 paid in the same years. It is federal money beside Category 3 and is never part of it. |
| Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship | A scholarship for children with disabilities, letting a parent buy special education services from an alternative public or a registered private provider instead of taking them from the resident district. The only capped scholarship program here. |
| Nonpublic Administrative Cost Reimbursement | The state repays chartered nonpublic schools for what they spent the previous year administering Ohio's mandates — $75.3 million in FY2025, against actual costs and up to a per-pupil ceiling the appropriation has not reached since the ceiling was raised. |
| Scholarship Donation Credit | A nonrefundable income tax credit, R.C. 5747.73, for gifts to scholarship organizations the Attorney General certifies: up to $750 a taxpayer, $1,500 on a joint return. Returns claimed $35.5 million for tax year 2024. No appropriation carries it, and nothing reports a scholarship it paid for. |
| Traditional EdChoice Scholarship | The original EdChoice: a scholarship tied to assignment to a low-performing public school building, authorized in 2005. A distinct program from the income-based expansion, running concurrently under different eligibility and award rules. |
Properties
What a funding program may carry.
| Property | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Name | string | Program name as it appears in statute and appropriation documents |
| Mechanism | string, one of deduction, direct-appropriation, funding-unit, reimbursement, competitive-grant, capital-assistance, tax-credit | How the program's money reaches its recipient now. funding-unit is payment to one of the funding units R.C. 3317.022 names beside the districts; deduction is a transfer out of the resident district's aid, which is how the scholarships ran before FY2022; tax-credit is revenue the state forgoes against a taxpayer's liability, on no appropriation line, so its cost is an estimate or a claims total and never an expenditure |
| Why this mechanism | text | Why the mechanism is the one named, and what it was before, where it changed — the scholarships were deductions until FY2022. A program paid one way throughout has nothing to note |
| Eligibility | text | Who qualifies, and how eligibility has changed over time |
| Amount | text | Per-recipient or per-project amount, by fiscal period |
| Appropriation line | string | Budget line item identifier |
Relationships
The edges this class may enter into. Out is declared by the node itself; in is declared by the node at the other end.
| Relationship | To | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Diverts from out | Education Agency | The agency whose funding is reduced or displaced by this program |
| Funds out | Education Agency | An agency this program pays money to, as capital assistance programs do |
| Challenged by in | Litigation | A case testing this program's lawfulness |
| Created by in | Legislation | The enactment that established the program |
| Administered by in | Institutional Actor | The institution that operates the program |