How My School is Affected by the Ohio School Funding Problems

“I’m going to be a firefighter! Or an astronaut! Maybe even the president of the United States of America!”

How would you like to explain to this child that the chances of getting any of these careers are slim to nothing? Well, that is what the parents of the students any St. Bernard-Elmwood Place is going through, since the house bill 66 failed. Next year, is the May 2nd levy fails once again there is going to be major changes in my school.

First off, and what people fear the most, is open enrollment. Complete strangers, history unknown, will be invited in to our schools with open arms. And quite frankly, I don’t like being stuck in that kind of situation. Also, our extracurricular activities will not get the proper funds, and there is a good chance they will get cut all together. Imagine how this would look to colleges. They are deciding between student A and B. Both have a 4.0, but one is in many clubs, organizations, and sports, while the other is in nothing. It’s not very hard to figure out who gets accepted and who gets denied. And to top it off, many of our classes will be cut. All the junior high music programs and art classes are going to be gone next year. When I was in 7th and 8th grade my music classes got me through the day. It’s not fair to deprive students of the joy and magic that is music. Not to mention it would be almost impossible to start teaching teenagers how to play and read music well once they reached the high school level.

Even before the levy failed my school didn’t have enough classes. Our school doesn’t even offer more than three years of social studies, when it is recommended to have taken four if you are planning on attending college. But we don’t have money to hire any more teachers. Also, we have only one foreign language available to take. I’m not saying that we all need to be linguist, but in order to get college’s attentions I think we need to be able to speak a few other languages than English.

Then of course there is the issue with our school’s sport’s teams. If the upcoming levy fails than the junior high will have no sports activities. And it is a fact that us high school students will be limited to one sport per season. I know that many of the people in my school work to keep their grades up to be eligible for sports teams. Personally, I think a lot of grades are going to drop since there is very little motivation to keep them up.

Without this next levy passing our school is going to be in serious trouble. And honestly, I am very worried. I want to get to take music classes, play sports, and be in extracurricular activities. I want to go to college. But if this levy fails I feel like so does my chance at living a prosperous life. Passing this levy means everything to me, because without it I have nothing.