December 8, 2025 • 8 mins
Vladimir Kogan, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State explains what needs to happen to balance the budget in CCS
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's switch over to the Legacy Retirement Group dot com
phone line. I want to talk about the Columbus City
Schools situation. They're upside down financially in a big way
to the two of fifty million dollars. Our expert this morning,
Vladimir Cogan, Ohio State University political science professor. Vlad and
I have had this discussion before. He's really good when
it comes to education. So I've lad good morning. I
(00:22):
appreciate you jumping on board of this this morning for
a few minutes. When you see that Columbus City Schools
have been basically bleeding enrollment. I mean, kids have been
leaving the district in droves, but yet they continue to
hire teachers and administrators.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That is not sustainable.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, that's right. So just to kind of put that
in perspective, over the last ten years or so, Columbus
has lost about five percent of its students, and yet
the number of teachers has increased by about eleven percent.
The number of other staff like bus drivers at custodians
also up eleven and the number of administrators is up
nearly fifty percent. Now, some of that I think is,
(01:01):
you know, hangover from the pandemic. The district got about
four hundred million dollars in federal pandemic aids. The problem
is that money was one time dollars, and you know,
the cardinals and government is using one time dollars to
pay for permanent, ongoing expenses, and that seems to be
partly the issue at Columbus is spaking out.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
That is very well said, spending one time dollars for
ongoing expense because those dollars are not coming back. I mean,
that's where you you got to put that in the bank,
and that's that's four hundred million, and now they're fifty
million short. And not only the increase in hiring amounts
of teachers and administrators, ld.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
They're paying them more too.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I mean that since twenty fifteen, teacher the average teacher
salary is skyrocketed.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, you know, it's up from about sixty five thousands
about eighty eight thousands, but that's actually roughly in line
with inflation. And so I think if district the district
had kept staffing levels of same or even maybe trimmed
them a little bit as an moment decline, they wouldn't
be facing the budget issues they face today. Now you mentioned,
you know, fifty million dollars. It's true that they made
(02:09):
fifty million dollars in cuts last week, but the actual
operating deficit is closer to about one hundred and ten million.
So even with the cuts that they made, you know,
in the next couple of years, they will eventually run
out of money and will have to either go back
to the ballot with a new levy request or you know,
make other I think, more serious changes.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
If you ask, school board administrators still say they're not
getting enough money from the state.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think it depends on how you define enough. You know,
Compared ten years ago, state funding is up by about
fifty percent, so funding has increased at least in line
with inslation, if not more so. Now. You know, a
few years ago, the states did adopt a new much
generous funding formula, and it has never fully funded that formula.
(02:52):
So compared to how much we've got in the past,
we're getting more compared to how much they think they
should get. Maybe they're you know, the case can be
made that they're not you know, getting as much as
they had expected, So let's.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Pull back a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
One of the main issues is enrollment declining by some estimates,
have you know, between three thousand and four thousand students
in the city school system over the last ten years.
So you ask yourself, why why are people leaving the
public school system in droves and going to charter schools,
private schools, or what have you.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
To me, it's it's got to be based on results, right.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I think we's also probably a part of the story.
So Columbus has, you know, for years, space and the
academic challenges, and I think has kind of dragged its
feet on really making the difficult decisions necessary to improve
the quality of instruction. So I think that's part of
the story. I think the other part of the story
is we have had at the state level really an
expansion of choice, including with vouchers, so that's made it
easier maybe some families who are already dissatisfied to leave.
(03:54):
And then the last part was really the pandemic, and
you did see, you know, in twenty one, really kind
of a big decrease in enrollment because Columbus was one
of the districts that stayed closed for the longest relative
to most of the rest of the states, and that
I think was the extra push for some families that
really gave him another reason to leave the district.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, so you're, yeah, you're you're now making decisions that
are best for you and your kid and your family,
and that is to not go to Columbus City Schools
and find a different path for your child. And we
could get into you know, the ED choice stuff and
you know, having the money follow the student versus stay
in the district. But you know, when it comes to that,
(04:31):
I mean, talk about the amount that Columbus City Schools.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Is spending per student.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I mean, back in twenty fifteen, it was like about
thirteen fourteen thousand dollars per pupil. Now you're looking at
twenty five grand to educate a kid every year.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
It's that's that's a big number. Is that in line
with inflation too?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
No, that is about double the rate of inflation. Now,
you know some of that is again I think temporary
funding from the federal extra money, so you know it's
probably going to go down the next couple of years.
But you're right, spending is very high, especially when you
think about you know, other school districts. So in Franklin County,
Columbus is one of the highest spending opera pupil, and
would you compare it to really some of the elite
(05:10):
private schools. So I'm thinking of Saint Charles and Beckley.
You know, they are an outstanding program, but they spend
about ten thousand dollars less for student at least that's
their tuition. So, you know, I think it's hard to
make the case that Columbus is not getting enough money
to produce better results than receiving and they can certainly,
I think, make changes to you know, improve student outcomes
with the resources they have now.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Even in take the private school you mentioned Saint Charles
and take that out of it. Even other public schools
in central Ohio, in your New Albany district, in your
Upper Arlington district, or your old in Tanji district, there
is still and again public school they're still.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Spending less for pupil than Columbus City.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Schools in most of those cases, I think Up Arlington
and Grady are maybe maybe a little bit higher. Now,
you know, that's a little bit of a treaty comparison.
You know, Columbus does have fairly dis managed students. If
we think about on an Apple the Apples comparison, it
probably does cost more love us to provide a comparable
education to a place like OPPERA Arlington. So I think
(06:09):
we have to take that.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Into accountan okay, fair enough, But it all comes down
to it all comes down again to outcomes. I mean,
what what is your return on investment when you're sending
your kids to the city school and people just weren't
getting that for whatever reason, they they pulled the kids out.
And then yet the school system adds, you know what,
five hundred and fifty new positions, summer teacher, summer administrators.
(06:32):
If you or I ran our household budget like this led,
we would be we'd be in the poorhouse. I mean,
this is this was a I believe and correct me
if I'm wrong. This was avoidable by the district.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Oh absolutely, you're absolutely right. In fact, the former treasurer
of the district, Scanbahrick, you know, as we were making decisions,
kept reminding the board saying, hey, you know this happened
after the Great Recession. We had a fundy clip, so
please please be mindful, you know, don't take these one
time dollars and you know lock it in in a
way that's going to create budget issues. And you're absolutely
right you know, in terms of quality, I think, you know,
the challenging Columbus is that I think the board and
(07:06):
the district leadership has for a long time said, it's
really about quantity, it's not about quality. So just having
more adults is going to produce better outcomes, even if
the quality of some of those adults is not so great.
And so I think now we're in a position where,
you know, with fewer resources, we really need to focus
much more on the quality than this quantity.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So the fifty million they've got to cut it from
the annual budget. They're going to do so by cutting
some staffing positions, some administrators, some teachers.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
They're going to close a couple of the buildings.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
They're changing the way they do, you know, transportation, eliminate
high school bussing and so forth.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Is that going to do the trick? Is that going
to get them back on track?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
It might do the trick in the short rum in
terms of finances. I worry it's not going to do
the trick in terms of academics. And in fact, some
of the cuts transportations are probably going to make you know,
the academic issues worse because we're effectively telling students that
you have to stay in your neighborhood, and we have
incredibly goal and segregated city. So if we don't provide
(08:02):
transportation to students to leave that schools to go to
better schools, that's going to not move the needle stacks
caused to go backwards in terms of the academic performance
of students.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That's not good.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So again, and I got about a minute left speaking
with vlad Cogan and Ohio State University and political science
professor really smart on education as well, What's what's the solution?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
How do we dig ourselves out of this hole?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Well, again, clearly they have to be cuts, and I
think again we're making those cuts. It's really about figuring
out how do we improve quality. So we know, you know,
we know that from an audit done five years ago,
there's a lot of fairly low quality teachers in Columbus.
So if we fork focused on those areas and really
try to improve teacher quality, we could have I think,
much bigger returns of the investments with a relatively smaller
(08:46):
for staffing force, and so balance the budget and move
the needle academics at the same time,
Let's switch over to the Legacy Retirement Group dot com
phone line. I want to talk about the Columbus City
Schools situation. They're upside down financially in a big way
to the two of fifty million dollars. Our expert this morning,
Vladimir Cogan, Ohio State University political science professor. Vlad and
I have had this discussion before. He's really good when
it comes to education. So I've lad good morning. I
(00:22):
appreciate you jumping on board of this this morning for
a few minutes. When you see that Columbus City Schools
have been basically bleeding enrollment. I mean, kids have been
leaving the district in droves, but yet they continue to
hire teachers and administrators.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That is not sustainable.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, that's right. So just to kind of put that
in perspective, over the last ten years or so, Columbus
has lost about five percent of its students, and yet
the number of teachers has increased by about eleven percent.
The number of other staff like bus drivers at custodians
also up eleven and the number of administrators is up
nearly fifty percent. Now, some of that I think is,
(01:01):
you know, hangover from the pandemic. The district got about
four hundred million dollars in federal pandemic aids. The problem
is that money was one time dollars, and you know,
the cardinals and government is using one time dollars to
pay for permanent, ongoing expenses, and that seems to be
partly the issue at Columbus is spaking out.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
That is very well said, spending one time dollars for
ongoing expense because those dollars are not coming back. I mean,
that's where you you got to put that in the bank,
and that's that's four hundred million, and now they're fifty
million short. And not only the increase in hiring amounts
of teachers and administrators, ld.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
They're paying them more too.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I mean that since twenty fifteen, teacher the average teacher
salary is skyrocketed.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, you know, it's up from about sixty five thousands
about eighty eight thousands, but that's actually roughly in line
with inflation. And so I think if district the district
had kept staffing levels of same or even maybe trimmed
them a little bit as an moment decline, they wouldn't
be facing the budget issues they face today. Now you mentioned,
you know, fifty million dollars. It's true that they made
(02:09):
fifty million dollars in cuts last week, but the actual
operating deficit is closer to about one hundred and ten million.
So even with the cuts that they made, you know,
in the next couple of years, they will eventually run
out of money and will have to either go back
to the ballot with a new levy request or you know,
make other I think, more serious changes.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
If you ask, school board administrators still say they're not
getting enough money from the state.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think it depends on how you define enough. You know,
Compared ten years ago, state funding is up by about
fifty percent, so funding has increased at least in line
with inslation, if not more so. Now. You know, a
few years ago, the states did adopt a new much
generous funding formula, and it has never fully funded that formula.
(02:52):
So compared to how much we've got in the past,
we're getting more compared to how much they think they
should get. Maybe they're you know, the case can be
made that they're not you know, getting as much as
they had expected, So let's.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Pull back a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
One of the main issues is enrollment declining by some estimates,
have you know, between three thousand and four thousand students
in the city school system over the last ten years.
So you ask yourself, why why are people leaving the
public school system in droves and going to charter schools,
private schools, or what have you.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
To me, it's it's got to be based on results, right.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I think we's also probably a part of the story.
So Columbus has, you know, for years, space and the
academic challenges, and I think has kind of dragged its
feet on really making the difficult decisions necessary to improve
the quality of instruction. So I think that's part of
the story. I think the other part of the story
is we have had at the state level really an
expansion of choice, including with vouchers, so that's made it
easier maybe some families who are already dissatisfied to leave.
(03:54):
And then the last part was really the pandemic, and
you did see, you know, in twenty one, really kind
of a big decrease in enrollment because Columbus was one
of the districts that stayed closed for the longest relative
to most of the rest of the states, and that
I think was the extra push for some families that
really gave him another reason to leave the district.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, so you're, yeah, you're you're now making decisions that
are best for you and your kid and your family,
and that is to not go to Columbus City Schools
and find a different path for your child. And we
could get into you know, the ED choice stuff and
you know, having the money follow the student versus stay
in the district. But you know, when it comes to that,
(04:31):
I mean, talk about the amount that Columbus City Schools.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Is spending per student.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I mean, back in twenty fifteen, it was like about
thirteen fourteen thousand dollars per pupil. Now you're looking at
twenty five grand to educate a kid every year.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
It's that's that's a big number. Is that in line
with inflation too?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
No, that is about double the rate of inflation. Now,
you know some of that is again I think temporary
funding from the federal extra money, so you know it's
probably going to go down the next couple of years.
But you're right, spending is very high, especially when you
think about you know, other school districts. So in Franklin County,
Columbus is one of the highest spending opera pupil, and
would you compare it to really some of the elite
(05:10):
private schools. So I'm thinking of Saint Charles and Beckley.
You know, they are an outstanding program, but they spend
about ten thousand dollars less for student at least that's
their tuition. So, you know, I think it's hard to
make the case that Columbus is not getting enough money
to produce better results than receiving and they can certainly,
I think, make changes to you know, improve student outcomes
with the resources they have now.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Even in take the private school you mentioned Saint Charles
and take that out of it. Even other public schools
in central Ohio, in your New Albany district, in your
Upper Arlington district, or your old in Tanji district, there
is still and again public school they're still.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Spending less for pupil than Columbus City.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Schools in most of those cases, I think Up Arlington
and Grady are maybe maybe a little bit higher. Now,
you know, that's a little bit of a treaty comparison.
You know, Columbus does have fairly dis managed students. If
we think about on an Apple the Apples comparison, it
probably does cost more love us to provide a comparable
education to a place like OPPERA Arlington. So I think
(06:09):
we have to take that.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Into accountan okay, fair enough, But it all comes down
to it all comes down again to outcomes. I mean,
what what is your return on investment when you're sending
your kids to the city school and people just weren't
getting that for whatever reason, they they pulled the kids out.
And then yet the school system adds, you know what,
five hundred and fifty new positions, summer teacher, summer administrators.
(06:32):
If you or I ran our household budget like this led,
we would be we'd be in the poorhouse. I mean,
this is this was a I believe and correct me
if I'm wrong. This was avoidable by the district.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Oh absolutely, you're absolutely right. In fact, the former treasurer
of the district, Scanbahrick, you know, as we were making decisions,
kept reminding the board saying, hey, you know this happened
after the Great Recession. We had a fundy clip, so
please please be mindful, you know, don't take these one
time dollars and you know lock it in in a
way that's going to create budget issues. And you're absolutely
right you know, in terms of quality, I think, you know,
the challenging Columbus is that I think the board and
(07:06):
the district leadership has for a long time said, it's
really about quantity, it's not about quality. So just having
more adults is going to produce better outcomes, even if
the quality of some of those adults is not so great.
And so I think now we're in a position where,
you know, with fewer resources, we really need to focus
much more on the quality than this quantity.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So the fifty million they've got to cut it from
the annual budget. They're going to do so by cutting
some staffing positions, some administrators, some teachers.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
They're going to close a couple of the buildings.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
They're changing the way they do, you know, transportation, eliminate
high school bussing and so forth.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Is that going to do the trick? Is that going
to get them back on track?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
It might do the trick in the short rum in
terms of finances. I worry it's not going to do
the trick in terms of academics. And in fact, some
of the cuts transportations are probably going to make you know,
the academic issues worse because we're effectively telling students that
you have to stay in your neighborhood, and we have
incredibly goal and segregated city. So if we don't provide
(08:02):
transportation to students to leave that schools to go to
better schools, that's going to not move the needle stacks
caused to go backwards in terms of the academic performance
of students.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That's not good.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So again, and I got about a minute left speaking
with vlad Cogan and Ohio State University and political science
professor really smart on education as well, What's what's the solution?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
How do we dig ourselves out of this hole?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Well, again, clearly they have to be cuts, and I
think again we're making those cuts. It's really about figuring
out how do we improve quality. So we know, you know,
we know that from an audit done five years ago,
there's a lot of fairly low quality teachers in Columbus.
So if we fork focused on those areas and really
try to improve teacher quality, we could have I think,
much bigger returns of the investments with a relatively smaller
(08:46):
for staffing force, and so balance the budget and move
the needle academics at the same time,
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