When we let vouchers drain our schools, it hurts us all.
December 2, 2025
Good Tuesday morning,
Remember that old saying: don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back? Well, don’t be surprised to see a number of state lawmakers in casts.
Legislative leaders have been jumping up and down with pretend joy over their recent efforts to pass laws addressing the rising property tax issues across the state.
As Thomas Suddes, a statewide columnist notes, it’s pure “baloney.”
“What legislators actually did was pass the buck, as usual, to voters to raise more local money for schools by passing more property tax levies, or to butcher local schools’ budgets. Which, given voters’ rage over property taxes, is likelier?”
Read Suddes’ column here.
The headline says it all: “Property-tax ‘reform’ just shifts school-funding to homeowners.”
You know who has to ask voters to pass those levies? Local school board members, superintendents, treasurers, and the community groups that put together levy campaigns.
So the enmity shifts from irresponsible lawmakers to those responsible for ensuring our local public schools are funded.
If you wonder why we are suing the state, challenging the constitutionality of the EdChoice private school voucher scheme, look no further.
At the same time, lawmakers and Gov. DeWine are shortchanging local public schools, they are prepared to spend $1.7 billion in the next two years on a boondoggle for private, mostly religious schools, and a rebate and refund for mostly wealthy families whose children were already enrolled in private schools.
It bears repeating: the funding for EdChoice comes from the same line-item in the two-year state budget that pays for public schools, so a dollar more for private school vouchers is a dollar less available for public schools.
Suddes quotes Howard Fleeter in his column. Fleeter testified before lawmakers that in fiscal year 1999, shortly after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state’s funding system unconstitutional, the state’s share of funding local public schools was 45.7 percent.
In the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the state’s share of funding public schools is expected to be 35 percent.
We believe this system that siphons away $1.7 billion from public schools for private schools is unconstitutional, and Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page agreed with us in June on three counts.
Join us.
Is your district part of our historic lawsuit? Check here.
If not, why not? Learn more here.
Sincerely,
Vouchers Hurt Ohio