MasonBuzz.com

A spring tradition is under way as Lakota high school students, some clothed and some not, do battle in Nerf Wars on their neighborhood streets.

The annual event involves students pairing up in groups and chasing each other with Nerf guns. If shot, the student and his group is in jeopardy of being eliminated and therefore ineligible to win the cash prize or pot collected from the entrants.

Lakota is not the only district that participates in Nerf Wars. Tracey Carson, public information officer of the Mason School District, said Nerf Wars have taken place in that school district for about 10 years.

At first glance, the game appears to be harmless, but Lakota administrators sent out an email to parents of both East and West high schools this week stressing that their child’s safety could be at risk.

According to the email, which was written together by Lakota West principal Elgin Card and Lakota East principal Suzanna Davis, students have been known to shoot each other from vehicles and participate in car chases during Nerf Wars.

Davis, who has been a Lakota administrator for eight years, said Nerf Wars has been around since she started working in the district. Both principals stressed that “Nerf Wars is not a school-sanctioned or organized event.”

“Any time your attention is not on the road, there is a possibility that something could happen.” Card said. “We don’t want any of our young people injured and we don’t want them injuring anybody else.”

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Fewer dollars for Ohio schools has meant fewer teachers in classrooms in many districts across the state.

State records show the number of full-time teachers in public schools fell by nearly 6 percent over a decade ending in the 2010-11 school year, and surveys by education associations and The Associated Press indicate the downward trend has continued the last two school years. There’s little expectation of immediate improvement as districts grapple with reduced state funding, declines in property tax revenues and voter reluctance in many districts to approve new levies as households slowly recover from the Great Recession.

“There’s no bright light on the horizon,” said Damon Asbury, legislative services director for the Ohio School Boards Association. “Schools will continue to do more with less.”

The results of cuts for many schools: more students per teacher, fewer electives in areas such as foreign languages and arts classes, reduced support staff.

Gov. John Kasich and his administration have urged schools to focus their dollars on classroom instruction, raise standards such as lower-elementary reading proficiency, and to stretch their budgets by pooling resources in such areas as technology, office functions and transportation.

“We do need to manage our schools better financially,” the Republican governor said in June while signing an education reform package including a “guarantee” that third-graders will be able to read before being passed ahead. “And in addition to that, what are we teaching kids in kindergarten, first and second grade if we’re not teaching them to read?”

Ohio voters last year turned back a Republican-led effort to restrict collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees amid criticism of teacher unions for making it difficult to target ineffective teachers for cuts.

Personnel costs are usually the major portion of a district’s budget, so any significant budget cuts usually mean job losses. The state School Boards Association surveyed districts this year and, with 268 of the state’s 613 districts responding, found they have reduced staff by an average of 13 full-time employees each since 2008, with some big city districts cutting hundreds of employees. Cleveland Municipal Schools slashed 658 jobs, to 3,311 total, according to the survey. Lakota Local Schools, a major northern Cincinnati suburban district, says it is down to 915 full-time teachers, 236 fewer than the 2007-’08 school year.

Ohio Department of Education statistics show full-time public school teachers totaled 115,453 statewide in 2001-2002, then were at 108,888 by 2010-11 after falling to 107,924 in 2007-08 amid the national financial meltdown. Enrollment fell slightly between ‘01 and 2010-’11, by about 6,000 students, to nearly 1.75 million statewide. And recent AP sampling of 30 school districts across the state found that 24 reported fewer teachers compared to the last academic year, with four districts increasing teaching staff numbers and two staying the same.

It’s not just Ohio.

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Teachers in Ohio are feeling a little overwhelmed these days.

They’re told they must help students master Ohio’s current academic requirements and pass annual state tests this spring.

But teachers also must prepare students, and themselves, for new Common Core requirements, tougher standards which will replace Ohio’s math and language arts requirements. New Common Core tests are expected in 2014-15.

And between now and then:

• The state is rolling out new school and district report cards with higher academic standards and A to F letter grades beginning this summer.

• Ohio is developing new science and social studies standards and tests.

• Ohio has ordered schools to test reading proficiency as early as kindergarten and provide extra help to slow readers because, beginning in the 2013-14 school year, third-graders can held back if they’re reading behind their grade level.

• Schools will begin evaluating teachers annually, basing half the evaluation on student test scores. For the first time teachers can lose jobs or a raise based on test scores.

Teachers and principals are reeling trying to prepare for it all, they said. Never has so much changed so quickly and pulled them in some many conflicting directions, they say.

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Just three months in existence, a new state scholarship program for disabled students is angering some Greater Cincinnati school officials, who say their districts are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on private school tuition for students who have never attended public schools.

“It’s a confiscation of public funds taken for private purposes,” said Robert Selhorst, an assistant superintendent at Oak Hills Schools, which has lost more than $427,000 so far this year to the program, even though only two of its 52 scholarship recipients ever attended an Oak Hills school.

The Jon Peterson Special Needs scholarships allow the state to take some of the money it would have sent to a public school district to educate a special needs student, and instead give it to a private school when the student is transferred.

Proponents say the parents of those students require more educational choices, regardless of whether their kids attend public or private school.

“No one school meets the needs of every student, particularly children with disabilities,” said Larry Keough, associate director for education with the Catholic Conference of Ohio and parent of two children with disabilities.

The program, which started this school year, also balances out the educational costs parents of special needs children have to pay, he said.

“Let’s remember that the parents who send their children to nonpublic schools pay local, state and federal taxes and pay tuition at a nonpublic school. There ought to be a sense of social justice and some benefit for them.”

But district leaders say they are not losing students to the scholarship. Just money.

The program has gone farther than they expected because most of the money is not funding students who switched from public to private schools. Instead, the majority of the money is paying for students who already attend private schools and plan to stay put.

“Bottom line for us: The more the state is able to ‘find’ new revenue for private schools, the less they seem to have to allocate to public schools,” said Tracey Carson, Mason Schools spokeswoman.

Mason has lost more than $60,000 so far to the program, she said. Meanwhile, Ohio has cut what its sends her district for overall school operations by about $8 million compared to five years ago.

“This just means that public schools are forced to go to their local voters more often and for larger amounts,” she said.

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