When we let vouchers drain our schools, it hurts us all.
June 25, 2024
Some of the wealthiest districts in the state are getting hit the hardest by the explosive growth of the unaccountable universal voucher scheme in Ohio.
A recent story in the Dayton Daily News says it all: EdChoice vouchers: Students living in suburban districts part of latest use increase in Ohio. Read it here.
The Daily News noted: “Although the number of students in suburban public school districts using vouchers increased, it didn’t mean enrollment went down in those (public) districts.”
Dayton focused on Centerville, which had the second-highest number of students living in the district and attending private schools on vouchers in the 2023-24 school year.
Enrollment in Centerville did not drop, and the analysis by the Dayton newspaper found that two private schools in the area, Incarnation and Spring Valley, added 673 universal vouchers to their program, but enrollment in those two schools was also flat.
The Dayton newspaper noted…”meaning that many people who were already attending started taking vouchers.”
Vouchers were sold to the Ohio and American public as a way to give families with lesser means a choice, but it is now a full-blown refund and rebate plan using public tax dollars for wealthy families to put their children in private, most often, religious schools.
It is the exact opposite of what it originally purported to be: private religious schools are raking in hundreds of millions of public tax dollars diverted from public schools and this program is making segregation of our schools worse.
Centerville voters have turned down two levies in the last year. The funding for private school vouchers comes from the same line that the state uses to pay for public schools, and Ohio’s public schools are not funded at a constitutional level.
The universal school voucher program is creating universal problems across Ohio.
According to the Dayton Daily News: “The number of income-based EdChoice vouchers used in private schools in six area counties — Montgomery, Miami, Greene, Warren, Butler and Clark — jumped from 3,058 in the 2022-2023 school year to 12,637 last year.”
Lawmakers are not going to stop. They are going to expand this program even more and they are creating a separate and unequal system of schools for the wealthy haves and another for the rest of Ohio.
We believe this is unconstitutional, and more and more school districts are joining our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the private school voucher program known as EdChoice.
Last night, Akron’s school board voted to join.
Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.
If not, why not? Find out how to join here.