How Sycamore's budget grew $51 million — and why most of it was already written.

The story starts in 2015 with a state budget decision that had nothing to do with Sycamore. Ohio's tangible personal property tax — a tax on business equipment that local school districts had relied on for decades — had been phased out years earlier, but the state had been making districts whole through reimbursement. In 2015 those reimbursement payments ended. Sycamore's share of that loss was approximately $9 million a year, about 12% of the district's then-budget, gone permanently.

The board's response was the November 2016 levy: a 6.5-mill continuing operating levy generating roughly $11 million a year. The campaign told voters it would last "at least five years." It passed. A decade later, Sycamore is on its tenth year of that same levy.

Why being above the 20-mill floor is the first thing to know

House Bill 920, passed in 1976, automatically rolls back voted operating millage when property values rise, holding nominal revenue from those levies essentially flat. The rollback stops once a district falls to the 20-mill floor; below the floor, districts capture inflationary growth. Most Ohio districts are at the 20-mill floor. Sycamore is not — its effective operating millage sits comfortably above it, which means the 6.5-mill 2016 levy generates almost exactly $11 million a year — in 2017 dollars, in 2026 dollars, and in 2030 dollars. Ten years of inflation, zero years of inflation revenue from the largest source of district funding.

Only Sycamore's 4.63 inside (unvoted) mills grow with property values. That is the single biggest reason expenditures and revenue diverge over the period this story covers. The spending side runs on contract-and-medical inflation; the revenue side runs on a 1976 statute designed to suppress it.

From 2005 onward, the board operated under a Financial Parameters Resolution that capped average General Fund growth at 2.5% and required a cash reserve of at least 25% of expenditures. The resolution was extended through 2021 and broadly hit its targets — FY21 General Fund expenditures ran at about $82 million, well within the cap.

What that discipline produced, between FY17 and FY22, was a cash reserve that climbed to roughly $58 million at its FY21–FY22 peak. The board had three plausible ways to use it. They could go back to voters for new operating revenue. They could make programmatic cuts. Or they could spend the reserve down. They chose option three. The result is the period this story is now ending: ten years of stretching a five-year levy by burning a decade of accumulated cash.

The reserve, in a single sentence

From a peak of roughly $58 million in FY22, Sycamore's General Fund cash balance is projected to breach the board's own 25% policy floor in FY27, fall to 19% in FY28, and turn negative in FY30 at about −10% (slide 19). Treasurer Burson flagged this trajectory to the board in October 2024, telling them the cushion "looks substantially worse by FY29." The 2nd-grade position elimination announced for FY27 is the leading edge of that warning becoming a balance sheet.

In November 2019, voters approved a $127.5 million bond for facilities — the replacement of E.H. Greene Intermediate, the replacement of Sycamore Junior High, the renovation of Sycamore High School, the expansion of Symmes Elementary, a new Transportation Facility, a Natatorium, an expanded Stadium with Field House, and Baseball/Softball Phase 1. Bond debt service is paid through a separate 2.4-mill levy — it does not hit the General Fund. That part is true and worth saying clearly.

What is also true: the General Fund has absorbed $15,959,966 in capital transfers and advances over FY22–FY25 to support that same building program. Page 14 of the October 2025 forecast lists every line item.

Add to that an annual $4.1 million transfer to the Permanent Improvement Fund plus $135,000 to the Athletic Fund (slide 5) — $4.235 million leaving the General Fund every single year of the forecast. Across FY26–FY30 that's $21.2 million of cumulative General Fund expenditure on capital and capital-adjacent items, separate from the $15.96M already booked.

The operating tail nobody talks about

New buildings are larger and more system-dense than what they replaced. A natatorium adds pool-water heating, dehumidification, chemicals, lifeguard staffing, and additional custodial. An expanded stadium adds lighting, irrigation, grounds, and event-staffing costs. The 2021-era CMTA $4.08 million / 14-year energy-performance contract covers six older buildings — but not the new ones. That operating tail is permanent, it lives in the General Fund, and it grew the fixed cost base every year the building program advanced.

Sycamore's salary-and-benefits pool runs at $84,938,140 in FY26 — 81.5% of operating expenditures (slide 7). Anyone who wants to understand district expenditures has to start there. The two collective bargaining agreements that govern that 81.5% — the Sycamore Education Association for ~450 certified staff, OAPSE Local 243 for classified staff — are both negotiated on a base-plus-step structure. The October 2025 forecast assumes 3% base + 2% step per year going forward (slide 5). That is roughly 5% combined wage growth a year, before benefits.

None of this is unusual for an Ohio suburban district. Mariemont, Indian Hill, Madeira, and Wyoming all operate inside the same arithmetic — an 80%-personnel cost structure with step-and-base CBAs and a medical-trend assumption north of 5%. What is unusual at Sycamore is not the cost arithmetic. It is what was being done to the revenue side at the same time — by people who do not work at Sycamore Community Schools.

Everything in Acts I through IV was something Sycamore had agency over. The board capped budget growth at 2.5% a year and broadly hit that target. The treasurer joined the Butler Health Plan consortium in 2010 to get group purchasing leverage on insurance. Administrators ran a cost-neutral restructuring that put a full-time assistant principal in every elementary without adding net headcount. The district signed a fourteen-year, $4.08 million energy-performance contract to wring efficiency out of older buildings. Voters approved a building bond that paid its own debt service through a separate levy. Headcount was reduced by more than 100 FTE since 2003–04, mostly through attrition. The board chose to spend down a $58 million cash reserve over a decade rather than make programmatic cuts or return to the ballot.

None of those decisions were errors. In aggregate they are the kind of disciplined, conservative budget management a high-performing suburban district is supposed to demonstrate — which is why no Sycamore building has closed, no academic program has been eliminated, no transportation route has been cut, no athletic offering has been reduced, and no world-language, music, or art program has been sacrificed since 2015. The district that walked into 2026 with a forecast cliff is a district that did its part for fifteen straight years.

What follows is what Sycamore did not control. Three policy actions taken by the State of Ohio across the same window — one structural and nearly fifty years old, two enacted in the last three years — closed off the revenue paths the district had been relying on. None of them appear on a Sycamore expenditure ledger. They appear only as the absence of dollars that previous funding architecture would have delivered.

HB 920 — the largest line, frozen since the disco era

It is hard to overstate how unusual Sycamore's position above the 20-mill floor is, or how punishing the asymmetry becomes over a decade. The 6.5-mill operating levy voters approved in November 2016 to fill the TPP hole has generated approximately $11 million every year since — in 2017 dollars, in 2026 dollars, and in 2030 dollars. Across that fourteen-year span U.S. consumer prices rose roughly 35%. Sycamore's largest source of operating revenue rose zero. The ten-year gap between the levy's promised five-year life and its actual ten-year life is precisely the gap that compounding inflation on the spending side, with no inflation on the revenue side, was always going to produce — and it is exactly what the 1976 statute was designed to do. Most Ohio districts have already fallen to the 20-mill floor and so capture inflation on operating revenue. Sycamore, by virtue of being a district whose voters reliably support school funding, has stayed above that floor and captures none of it.

HB 33 — a deduction that has nothing to do with district performance

The voucher mechanic deserves to be understood in its detail. A resident student attending Summit Country Day, Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, Rockwern Academy, or any other EdChoice-eligible private school triggers a state-paid scholarship of $6,166 K–8 or $8,408 high school. Since FY22 those scholarships are paid directly by the state rather than deducted from the resident district's foundation aid line, but the dollars come from the same K–12 General Revenue Fund pool that funds the Fair School Funding Plan — meaning every voucher dollar reduces the pool the legislature would need to draw from to fully fund public schools. The state spent over $1.095 billion on voucher programs in FY25 (166,589 students), up from roughly $354 million in FY22-23 — a tripling in two years driven entirely by HB 33's universal-eligibility expansion. Roughly 65,000 of the new FY24 vouchers went to families already in private school (Policy Matters Ohio estimate), and the low-income share of recipients fell from 67% to 17% in a single year. The district has no instrument to influence any of this other than its own enrollment marketing.

HB 96 — the formula was supposed to be the answer

The Fair School Funding Plan was the most ambitious school-funding overhaul Ohio had attempted in a generation, designed by a bipartisan committee in response to repeated state-court determinations that the prior funding system was unconstitutional. It was built to phase in over six years on up-to-date base-cost inputs that would adjust for actual educational costs. Sycamore, as a high-wealth district held to the 10% statutory minimum, was never the principal beneficiary — but the phase-in did at least promise that whatever state aid it received would track current costs rather than 2022 figures from before the post-pandemic inflation surge. HB 96 ended that. Base-cost inputs are now frozen at 2022 inputs, most districts are held to a guarantee at FY21 nominal levels, and the legislature's policy choice shows up in Sycamore's October 2025 forecast as state foundation aid that is essentially flat in nominal dollars — meaning shrinking in real terms — for as far as the forecast looks.

One bright spot, fairly stated: the forecast does assume a one-time 11% revenue increase in FY26, tied to the 2026 mid-cycle property-value update — half of the 2023 reappraisal's ~22% jump (slide 3). After that single bump, operating revenue returns to structurally flat for the remainder of the forecast horizon.

Cumulatively, the three policy events did something specific and deliberate. They took a district whose cost growth was running at the structurally normal 4–5% per year and flattened the largest revenue line, opened a new and growing deduction on the second, and froze the third. Spending was not unmanaged. Revenue was reauthored.

The four forces converge in a five-year window. The cash reserve is exhausted. The CBAs reopen. The state funding formula sits frozen. The capital tail of the 2019 bond program is fully landed. Revenue inflation is statutory zero. Cost growth runs on contract.

The board's choices, in the order they're being made

• FY26 · Now Both SEA and OAPSE contracts reopen and are being negotiated this fiscal year. Each percentage point of base increase moves multi-millions across the forecast.
• Apr 29 · 2026 Board meeting at which one 2nd-grade teaching position at Montgomery Elementary is on the table for elimination — the first instructional cut after a decade of avoiding them.
• Jul–Aug · 2026 Filing deadlines for placing a November 2026 levy on the ballot — already on the district's calendar (slide 19).
• Dec · 2025 Three General Fund debts mature: Energy Conservation, Blue Ash Elementary, District Office. About $866,000/year frees up starting in FY27.
• FY27 · Planned Instructional Coaches eliminated — the forecast's verbatim Purchased Services assumption: "−4.3% (2027 — Instructional Coaches go away)" (slide 5).
• FY27 · Floor Cash balance breaches 25% policy floor.
• FY28 · 19% Cash balance projected at 19% — six points below policy.
• FY30 · −10% Cash balance projected negative without new operating revenue.

What the forecast assumes, in plain language