The new policy will bar most new students from enrolling in the district unless they live within Ashland’s boundaries, with two key exceptions: current open-enrolled students will be allowed to stay through graduation, and children of Ashland City Schools staff members who live outside the district may continue to enroll. Superintendent Steve Paramore told board members the change is necessary to address what he described as a roughly million-dollar deficit caused by gaps between the state’s per-pupil funding and the actual cost of educating students who live outside the district.
“For years, we’ve welcomed students from neighboring communities, and many of those students and families have been tremendous additions to our schools,” Paramore said, explaining that the district receives significantly less state aid for open-enrolled students than it does for pupils whose families pay local property or income taxes into the system. “But we simply can’t keep absorbing a shortfall of this size without cutting into the education of students whose families live in the Ashland City School District.”
Under Ohio’s Fair School Funding Plan, Ashland’s state foundation funding has been shrinking as a share of its overall revenue, even as costs associated with staffing, transportation and student services continue to rise. Paramore previously told the board that Ashland receives just over 39 percent of its funding from the state this school year, a figure projected to drop to about one-third next year, leaving the district to lean more heavily on local taxpayers. For open-enrolled students, Ashland is allotted roughly 3,200 dollars per pupil by the state—nearly 5,000 dollars less than what the district estimates it costs to educate each student, creating a structural gap that grows with every nonresident enrollment.
This school year, Ashland has just over 200 open-enrolled students. If each were funded at the same rate as resident students, the district would receive about 1.66 million dollars, Paramore said at a recent meeting, but instead gets just over 1 million dollars from the state for that group. That difference, he argued, effectively forces the district to subsidize the education of students whose families do not contribute local taxes to Ashland schools, at a time when state revenue has “flatlined” and new state law caps the growth of local property tax collections.
Board President Pam Mowry and other members signaled at earlier meetings that they were reluctant to completely end open enrollment, but felt boxed in by state policy and the district’s finances. Mowry has said she hopes lawmakers will revise the formula that underfunds open-enrolled students but that Ashland cannot “sit here and just bite off 1 million dollars a year for people who didn’t choose to live in the Ashland City School District.”
Paramore said district administrators considered, but ultimately rejected, the idea of charging tuition to families who want to open enroll into Ashland. Instead, they recommended what he described as a “narrowed” open-enrollment policy that prioritizes stability for current students and recognizes the contribution of staff who live outside district boundaries, while stopping the annual addition of new, unfunded open-enrolled students.
The board’s vote means families outside the district will no longer be able to newly enroll students for 2026-27, a shift that could gradually reduce class sizes and transportation loads over several years as current open-enrolled students graduate. District officials say the step is one of several budget-balancing measures under consideration as they try to close the projected deficit without making deep cuts to programs or staffing for resident students.
Paramore emphasized that Monday’s decision does not reflect dissatisfaction with open-enrolled students themselves, many of whom have become standout performers in academics, arts and athletics. “There are tons of success stories,” he said at an earlier meeting, “but we don’t have any control over how the state decides what an open-enrolled student is worth, which is sad, but we don’t.”
Ashland City Schools plans to notify affected families in the coming weeks and to publish revised enrollment guidelines ahead of next spring’s application window. Board members indicated the district will continue to monitor its finances and state-level policy debates and could revisit the open-enrollment question in future years if funding conditions change.