A new state budget proposal would reduce the Granville Exempted Village School District’s funding by nearly $1 million by 2027, the school district’s treasurer reported during the monthly school board meeting on Monday, Feb. 10. The loss could be “catastrophic” for Granville schools at the same time a new housing development threatens to saturate the district with hundreds of students and significantly increase costs.
Brittany Treolo, the district’s treasurer, said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposed executive budget for 2026-2027 would eliminate “guaranteed” funds over the next two years.
For the last two years, the school has been on the “guarantee,” or a recipient of flat funding from the state, Treolo told the board. The “guarantee” is part of “two ‘guarantee’ provisions (that) prevent a district’s funding from falling below certain historical amounts,” according to a brief provided by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Essentially, the “guarantee” is flat funding from the state. Under the guarantee, there is no decrease in funding but also no increase in funding even as enrollment increases.
“The highlight from his proposal is that he is trying to eliminate the guarantee,” said Treolo while reading from files at her end of the U shaped desk. “… If the guarantee is eliminated, that means that we would see a decrease in state funding even as enrollment increases.”
The decrease, based on a 5% reduction in fiscal year 2026 and a 10% reduction in fiscal year 2027, would total about $1 million in funding lost over the district’s two year budget period.
“If that carries through the forecast period, that would have a pretty detrimental impact on our cash balance at the end of the five years,” Treolo said.
While DeWine’s executive budget is at the beginning of a legislative process, members of the Granville School Board said they were “very disappointed” by the information and described the potential loss as catastrophic. Board members indicated that they hold hope that the proposal to eliminate the “guarantees” will be adjusted to apply only to districts that are not experiencing enrollment increases.
After the meeting, Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown said elimination of the guarantee would target wealthier school districts, 30 of which belong to the Alliance for High Quality Education, an organization of 60 high-performing, wealthier school districts across Ohio. The Alliance plans to lobby the legislature for a change in the wording about “guarantees.”
The budget must pass through the Ohio House and Senate for initial changes before it returns to the Ohio House. The House then convenes a conference committee before it’s approved by the end of June.
“Having people advocate at the right times is absolutely critical for us to potentially make an impact,” Brown said. “The increase in student enrollment and not getting additional revenue is a challenge, but losing revenue in a million dollars over two years is a lot of money.”
The proposed budget does not come at a convenient time for the Granville School District. Heath City Council recently unanimously approved an annexation of 67 acres on Feb. 3. M/I Homes of Columbus is proposing to use that land and an adjacent parcel to build about 600 homes that would add about 960 students to Granville Schools and cost Granville property owners an estimated $2,000 more in taxes each year.
Before the proposed elimination of “guarantees,” district officials already were reeling with the news that they would have to absorb nearly 1,000 students with no extra funding. The idea that they could lose $1 million of expected funding over the course of the next two years only added to their concern.
Board Member Thomas Miller expressed a desire to see a board member at each Heath City Council meeting going forward and encouraged community members to attend as well, calling on people to ask Heath leadership to push for density reductions in the development plans laid out.
“This is a huge deal for this district – it’s the biggest deal in 20 years financially, culturally, facilities wise and so forth,” Miller said. “They don’t really understand the full implications … at 25 or 30 times more houses per acre than what our financial models are built on.”
The Granville School Board will hold its next Facility Master Planning Meeting at 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 in the Granville High School Commons, and the meeting is open to the public.
The board’s website now features a tab titled “FACILITY MASTER PLANNING” in the upper right hand corner. The tab links users to a page with information on upcoming meetings, recordings of past meetings, documents regarding annexation and a QR code which directs people to a page where questions about the Facility Master Planning process can be submitted. All questions submitted will be compiled into an FAQ.
In addition to the financial discussion, the board highlighted recent student successes during their Monday meeting.
We DID Start the Fire, a robotics team at Granville High School, was recognized by the board for the work they did planning and hosting a robotics tournament at The Ohio State University’s Newark branch on Jan. 11. The tournament included more than 150 teams.
After the team was presented with pins and congratulations, the school board meeting lost its crowd.
Andrew Theophilus writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.