Today we have a conversation with John Patterson, a former state representative and State Director of the USDA Farm Service Agency who has spent his career fighting for his community. He’s also the last rural Democrat to be elected to the Ohio Statehouse, and is likely to continue to hold that title for the foreseeable future.
We discuss Patterson’s journey from educator to elected official, his experience working across the aisle, and his concerns about the hardships facing Ohio farmers.
Patterson is best known for the “Cupp/Patterson school funding bill”, which attempted to overhaul the funding formula for Ohio’s public schools. The conversation gets a bit into the weeds, so here’s a little context for those less familiar with Ohio’s Public School funding saga:
Context: A very, very brief history of education funding in Ohio
In 1997, Ohio’s school funding formula was ruled to be unconstitutional in a decision mentioned several times throughout this episode, the “DeRolph Decision”. This ruling required that Ohio overhaul its school funding formula, a requirement that went unaddressed by the Ohio Statehouse for another 20-something years. A full chronology of the DeRolph decision can be found here.
It wasn’t until our friend John Patterson got on the scene and teamed up with a Republican legislator, Bob Cupp, to finally fix school funding and pass the Fair School Funding Plan, colloquially known as the Cupp/Patterson Plan.
But not so fast. Since that funding plan passed and both primary sponsors termed out, Ohio Republicans have failed to enact the formula, and instead favored private school vouchers (also recently found to be unconstitutional) and disinvesting from local schools, forcing heavier reliance on property taxes.
So the fight for fair school funding is far from over.
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Episode Information:
Recorded: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 at 4pmIn this Episode: Maria Bruno, Ainslee Johnson-BrownProduced, Edited, and Recorded by: Devin “Dev Draper” Palmer and Tareya Palmer
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