Ravenna School Superintendent Ben Ribelin acknowledged that the school district’s five-year financial forecast looked cloudy for a while. Brighter days now seem on the horizon after the Issue 12 operating levy passed on the primary ballot on Tuesday evening.
“Through all of the trials and tribulations we have had this year, the longtime not passing of any new money, 20 years in fact since we have had new operating funds, it was a great way to cap off the school year,” Ribelin told The Weekly Villager.
The levy will provide the school district with $2.75 million annually for the next five years. Ribelin said that the school district will only receive a portion of the $2.75 million in the first fiscal year. The levy passed by garnering approval of 51.03% from the voters.
According to Ribelin, the approved funds from the levy will go a long way in helping the school district achieve financial stability after several years of having to make significant cuts to maintain flexibility.
“It puts us in a stable financial position for the next few years,” he added. “We will be able to work our way out of fiscal caution with this and it will stabilize us not having to make as many cuts.”
Ribelin said that the school district will now be able to work on a building plan and operate without the burden of having to worry about fiscal failure for the next several years. Over the past few years, the school district had to eliminate approximately 30 teaching positions and also cut high school bussing and even formulated a consolidation plan.
There was also a discussion of implementing a pay-to-play policy for the Ravenna student-athletes, which would require their families to pay a fee so that their children could participate in high school athletics.
Although the school district’s financial future looks brighter, Ribelin said that it will still move ahead with closing the West Park Elementary School and implement its consolidation plan because there is still uncertainty about what the State Budget will look like as it has not been finalized yet,
“A lot of schools stand to lose money, and we are trying to do what we can to stay fiscally responsible and stay fiscally in the positive and work our way out of fiscal oversight from the Ohio Department of Education,” he noted. “That is our goal by the end of the year without going to the voters again and asking for some exorbitant amount of money.”
It marks the conclusion of a two-year battle that Ravenna engaged in to attempt to pass an operating levy for the first time in almost 20 years. Ribelin said that the school district first sought voter approval for an operating levy in May 2023 but failed to pass the measure on four consecutive ballots. Ravenna had previously passed two permanent improvement levies in the last decade but the funds from those levies could not be used for the school district’s operations.
Despite each defeat on the ballot, Ribelin said the levy was continuing to gain support and finally achieved the majority vote it needed to help the school district finally escape fiscal uncertainty.
“It just shows that our committee did a fabulous job hitting what they had to,” he noted. “We had five different public open sessions whether it was a state of the schools or levy committee roundtables. They had an open question day at Bean & Baker last Saturday, they have really just tried to get out to the community and push out the information that we had.”
Ribelin said that had the operating levy once again failed, the school district would have had to make additional cuts and would have also required intervention and oversight by the State Auditor, the Attorney General and a committee of community members and appointees that would have been authorized to make fiscal decisions.
With Ravenna’s operating levy now having cleared the final hurdle, Ribelin said that the key decision makers will remain in place to help clear Ravenna of its fiscal challenges.
“We will be able to maintain control of our district with our district resources and our district people as opposed to someone coming and taking over some of those decisions,” Ribelin remarked. The positive thing is that we have a plan moving forward that will make us stable and make us a better district financially, academically as well as physically.”
