Main Street

Scenes from Ohio: “Things are getting really bad out here”

Dan O’Malley—Ohio

General Motors plants across the country all stood on the dartboard last week, each hoping to not be affected by a sweeping round of closings. The GM stamping plant in Mansfield, Ohio was not so lucky.

“Things are getting really bad out here,” a GM retiree told me on Tuesday. “I really don’t see how we’ll survive it.”

The man estimated the Mansfield plant had 3,600 employees when he retired from there in 1991. Today it employs just over 500. In a year it will be completely closed.

Cities like Mansfield and neighboring Ontario were once sustained by the good-paying jobs and secure benefits its residents earned at General Motors. For decades, Ohio stood on the shoulders of such working men and women throughout the state. Now, more and more hardworking Ohioans are finding themselves turning to unemployment assistance, their will to work unmatched by opportunity.

Just a few miles from the GM plant is Richland Mall, once a bustling commercial center with a diverse array of high-end shops. The mall is now a small collection of discount clothiers and other stores struggling to stay afloat. At 2 p.m., the food court is completely empty, save for a single teenage worker at Nicky T’s Grille who wipes clean the counter while waiting for customers. At the end of the mall is a large, vacant, dilapidated building that once housed the now-defunct Lazarus Department Store.

Signs off the entrance to Richland Mall direct passers-by to visit the Red Farms development, a newly-constructed community of homes that “combines country living with urban appeal.” A short drive proves Red Farms to be just two nice but modest houses, built a few years ago. One resident tells me that when the housing crisis hit, demand for the new homes plummeted, and the development was eventually stopped. Overgrown grass and a smattering of utility boxes are all that are to be found where a thriving new community of families once promised to be.

As if jobs, commerce, and home ownership weren’t enough to worry about in such an economy, residents of Mansfield are worried about how it all will affect their local schools. The results are likely to be devastating, because in Ohio, funding levels for public education are tied directly to property values in the local community. And with the city’s manufacturing plant, commercial center, and neighborhoods turning more and more into ghost towns, property values and money for education are sure to plummet as well.

Nearly twenty years after such school funding practices were ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, schoolchildren in cities like Mansfield all across Ohio are still being crushed under the weight of this badly-flawed system.

Financial support for schools in the Buckeye State are dependent mostly on the wealth and economic viability of individual communities – even though access to public education should be a right equally enjoyed state-wide. For example, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Eastern Local Schools in southeast Ohio spent just over $7,000 per student in 2003 – and were only able to raise 16.3% of that money from local taxes. By contrast, Bay Village, Ohio, an affluent suburb in Northeast Ohio spent more than $9,600 per student that same year. Seventy percent of that funding came from local residents.

Finally, after numerous Supreme Court decisions and years of academic failure, Ohio’s Governor Ted Strickland has proposed a plan to make the state’s education funding fair. The Ohio House of Representatives is supporting the reforms. One potentially prohibitive roadblock, however, is the Ohio Senate. Senate President Bill Harris has yet to get on board. Ironically, Harris’ district includes the struggling city of Mansfield – depleted of jobs, new construction, and commerce.

Working America is actively organizing residents of this city and mobilizing them to put pressure on their state senator, reminding him of his responsibility to represent the interests of his constituents. Throughout the past two weeks, nearly a thousand residents have called Senator Harris urging him to support the Governor’s plan.

In the garage of a home on Tanglewood Road in Ontario, Ohio sits a reminder of the need for such reforms. It’s a bright yellow yard sign urging neighbors to pass last month’s local school levy. The measure was merely a renewal of the previous funding level, and the homeowner tells me that its passage was vital. “We were desperate,” she says. “This was about keeping basic services like buses, and replacing decades-old textbooks.”

Out of 2,500 ballots cast, the levy passed by just 68 votes.

The homeowner, a mother of three Ontario Schools students, knows it won’t be long before voters will be asked to pass yet another levy. “I was going to throw it out,” she says of the yellow VOTE YES sign in the back of her garage. “But I’m saving it for next time.”

Tags: Education, Jobs, Ohio