To the Editor,
No new taxes! Renewal school levy only! Vote Yes!

I am encouraging you to vote yes on our upcoming school levy (4.5-mill renewal) May 5. We are in difficult economic times and money is tight. School funding in Ohio is horrible. Districts must continually go to the public for money to operate our schools.

Some say let the Ohio Lottery help out the schools. Our Ohio Lottery merely allows the State to contribute less toward the necessary dollars for our schools. The lottery monies are not additional funds for our school, but monies that are deducted from the State allocations.

While the use of property taxes to fund schools is fundamentally flawed, Gov. Strickland has left us with no alternatives. We, as a community, must support Brown Local Schools.

As a Malvern graduate, teacher, community member, and a parent of two successful sons that graduated from Malvern, I take this issue personally. We need to keep our school in our community. The state of Ohio does not care about Brown Local Schools! We are too small for the state to come to our rescue with funding.

The State would just as soon distribute our children into other schools in our surrounding area. If that would happen, we would be paying the tax rates of the surrounding schools. Do you want to help pay for the new schools in our neighboring towns? I don’t.

We have to pay to educate our children, so let’s pay for our own school in Malvern. This levy will not increase any of the taxes we are already paying.

Have you attended any Malvern school events lately? The support for these events is amazing. It makes me proud when I see how many people come out to support our sporting events, choir and band concerts, open houses, plays, etc. We are so lucky to have so many people that support our children in their sports and other events. Our school is the very “heart” of our community.

Look at some of the towns that no longer have schools. They are missing their “heart”. Let’s keep our “heart” in our community by supporting the upcoming levy on May 5th.

No new taxes! Renewal school levy only! Vote yes!

Patty Van Horn
Malvern

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