By Fritz Edelstein
September 12, 2005

In March 2004, the Ohio Mayors' Education Roundtable was created to provide a forum for mayors from Ohio's eight largest cities to discuss education issues, and their leadership and involvement role in education. The lead mayors initially involved in the Roundtable are from Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo. Akron Mayor Donald L. Plusquellic has chaired each of the Roundtable meetings.

The plan was for the cities to meet twice a year to discuss education issues confronting mayors in their cities, share experiences and lessons learned, and discuss any state or national education issues which they could be involved. It was only two times because of the difficulty of getting the mayors together. However, the mayors have shown great interest and commitment to the education issues in the state. In Canton on August 4, 2005, the Ohio Mayors' Roundtable met for the fifth time in 16 months. Canton Mayor Janet Weir Creighton hosted the meeting. These meetings have been rotated among the original group of cities.

This does not include the five planning meetings that staff have attended to organize each Roundtable. Education has become a key issue on the mayors' radar screen and they see it as a central to the economic development and vitality of their cities.

In only two meetings the mayors identified an issue which they all felt needed to be addressed and required leadership from mayors. The mayors are focused on changing the school funding formula in the state. It is a very controversial education issue and one that is statewide but affects every city. Ohio's state Supreme Court has already found the formula to be unconstitutional and directed the State's legislature to fix it. Nothing has been done to address this issue so the mayors have decided to address it head on.

The Roundtable has expanded its participation to include the mayors for the 21 largest cities and districts in the state. The mayors have included in the last two Roundtables to bring additional experience and knowledge to the table the school superintendents from each of the cities. Also, eleven education groups who have been involved in school finance issues participated in the August 4 meeting. This is the first time that all of these education stakeholders have met together on any education issue. The August 4 meeting's participants included 14 mayors, 8 superintendents and the 11 education groups along with Susan Zelman, State's Superintendent of Public Instruction; John Myers, a school finance expert; and Paolo de Maria, State Department of Education's budget person.

Mayors are taking the lead on this issue and the August 4 meeting began a planning process to build a strategy for a 2006 ballot initiative to change school funding in Ohio. Without the participation and leadership of the mayors, it would be difficult for this effort to move forward.

A sixth meeting of the Roundtable is being planned for October 2005 in Springfield. Between August and October a working group comprised of five representatives from the education groups, four mayors' education policy advisors and four mayors are meeting to develop the critical components that must be included in any ballot initiative and policy options within each component. The October Roundtable meeting will focus on a discussion of the working group's suggestions.

The first year of the Roundtable was made possible by grants from the KnowledgeWorks, George Gund, Cleveland and Martha Holden Jennings Foundations. The second year is being funded with grants from the Wallace and KnowledgeWorks Foundations.