This fall, Ohio taxpayers will decide the fate of Senate Bill 5, a law designed, in part, to save Ohio’s public schools from out-of-control labor costs.
To help Ohio citizens better understand how schools are spending their precious tax dollars, Education Action Group is unveiling a new database containing the collectively bargained teacher contracts from most of the state’s school districts. The database can be found at PublicSchoolSpending.com.
EAG is a national education reform organization focused on reforming public school spending and holding vested interests accountable.
EAG has gathered contracts from 461 of the 614 school districts in the state. Additional contracts will be added to the site as they become available.
The database allows taxpayers and concerned citizens to see just how their local school is spending their money. While each district’s contract is unique, a typical agreement contains many costly provisions that drive up labor costs and have no bearing on student achievement.
Common wasteful provisions include automatic, annual “step” raises for teachers (regardless of classroom performance), lavish health insurance and pension benefits, generous amounts of sick and personal days off, payouts for unused sick and personal days, stipends for classroom “overages,” paid time off for teachers to conduct union business, to name just a few.
Collectively-bargained teacher contracts are laced with wasteful spending that does not benefit students. This database allows the average taxpayer to see their district’s contract and discover just where all their hard-earned tax dollars are going. Spend a little time on the site, and it becomes clear that most schools spend around 80 percent of their budgets on labor costs.
By trimming those costs, cash-strapped Ohio school districts can bring down expenses without undermining academic programs for students.
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