Even as some of Cincinnati’s urban core neighborhoods experience renewed vitality and increased prosperity on a scale they haven’t seen in decades, our city faces a profound economic crisis.
About half of Cincinnati’s children under the age of 18 live below the poverty line — one of the worst rates in the country. It’s an oft-repeated statistic, but there’s a less-discussed reality behind it. Those children live in poverty because their parents and guardians do. And many of those caretakers are poor because they were never given adequate educational opportunities necessary to fully thrive.
To address Cincinnati’s poverty problem, our schools have to provide a ladder toward better opportunities. But that takes resources. That’s why CityBeat wholeheartedly supports Issue 44, a $48 million, five-year levy aimed at extending preschool to many more students in the Cincinnati Public School District and improving CPS’s K-12 offerings.
In the 1990s, the Ohio Supreme Court decried the failings of the state’s public school funding system, eventually compelling Cincinnati to rebuild its crumbling buildings and re-think its approach. CPS has made strides since then and is long overdue for a budget boost to expand that progress to all.
Its last levy came in 2008, when voters narrowly approved a five-year, $51 million ask. Eight years later, the district’s enrollment is up by 2,000 students and its high school graduation rate is up from 64 percent to 73 percent.
The district has made those gains even as it experiences increasing challenges, including budget cuts, crowded schools and a big increase in the number of students in poverty. The share of CPS’s students living in economic hardship has skyrocketed 22 points since the last levy passed, approaching 82 percent.
CPS has some strategies for engaging those challenges, including its nationally recognized Community Learning Center model. CLCs provide so-called “wraparound services” — from eye care to psychological counseling — to students in low-income communities. The district has increased the number of CLCs in its schools from 26 to 42 since the last levy.
But it’s clear more needs to be done. That’s why it is imperative that voters approve Issue 44.
The stakes are high. Balanced against a slight tax increase for residents are the nearly incalculable costs of continued, even worsening, poverty problems — and racial inequities.
Cincinnati’s economic divisions fall heavily along racial lines. Many of our black residents live in poverty, and unequal educational opportunities are among the reasons why. CPS’s mostly low-income student body is nearly 70 percent black, a division that extends after students leave the classroom.
A study of major U.S. cities by social science journal New Geography published in January 2015 ranked Cincinnati 50 out of 52 cities when it came to the economic prospects of black residents. Citywide, the median household income for blacks in 2013 was $21,300. It was $48,000 for whites. That gap has been widening. In 2000, the median household income for white city residents was $36,452. For blacks, it was $20,984. In 13 years, whites in Cincinnati have gained $11,000 in median household income. Blacks have gained just $316.
To address Cincinnati’s race issues, we must address its poverty issues. To address those, we must address education. This is our chance to continue that fight.
Poverty has real impacts on future life outcomes for students. A 2015 study by the Urban Institute found that while 93 percent of students who have never been poor complete high school, only 64 percent of persistently poor students do. And while 70 percent of students who were never poor end up consistently employed between the ages of 25 to 30, only 35 percent of persistently poor students do.
The bulk of Issue 44’s ask will go toward creating more schools and improving and expanding existing ones on the K-12 level. We’re excited about that. But even more vital will be the $13 million aimed at expanding access to preschool in Cincinnati. That initiative would provide free tuition to 3- and 4-year-olds whose parents make less than $40,000 a year. Funding help for those making more would be provided on a sliding scale.
Research on preschool educational outcomes suggest that exposure to them can help mitigate some of the negative effects of housing instability or poor nutrition in the earliest and most pivotal years of a child’s life. A 2013 study by the Foundation for Child Development found that preschool boosted later academic achievement for students across the income spectrum, but did so most profoundly for low-income students.
This part of the levy was originally its own stand-alone proposal. We’re glad that Preschool Promise and CPS joined forces, collaborating instead of possibly competing for taxpayers’ votes.
We don’t like everything about Issue 44. For instance, we would rather it focused completely on strengthening public preschools, instead of allowing public money to potentially be siphoned off to charter or private preschools.
But we recognize that Issue 44 presents something rare: the chance to provide resources to schools to address the day-to-day symptoms of poverty its students face while fighting the generational roots of that poverty. The levy also offers an opportunity to ease Cincinnati’s racial divides while extending educational opportunities for all.
We’ve all wrung our hands about these issues separately. Now it’s time for Cincinnatians to say yes to this package deal.
CityBeat Endorses:
• Hillary Clinton for President
• Denise Driehaus, Todd Portune for County Commission
• Hamilton County: Alan Triggs, Seth Walsh, Aftab Pureval, Jim Neil and Lakshmi Sammarco
• Congress and State House: Brigid Kelly, Catherine Ingram and Alicia Reece
This article appears in Nov 2-9, 2016.
