Photos from the Ohio State Fair Booth

August 4, 2026

We are having a wonderful time at the Ohio State Fair this year, talking to hundreds of people who support their local public schools.

Here is a photo of our Hero Wall where current and former students write the names of their favorite teacher on a sticky note and place it alongside others. It fills up so fast each year that we need a second wall.

Many of the people we are talking to already oppose EdChoice private school vouchers.

Others get angry when they learn that pro-voucher lawmakers shortchanged public schools by $3 billion in the current budget while siphoning away $1.7 billion to mostly religious schools for mostly wealthy families whose children were never in public schools.

They should be mad. This is a ripoff of taxpayers without a shred of financial or academic accountability.

In past years, when we’ve been at the fair, the School Choice crowd has put up a booth. This year they ran up a white flag of surrender. Very few people were visiting them. The people running the booth were often sitting looking at their laptop computers all day long. 

Here is a photo of where School Choice has been the last few years.

The choice issue is a false flag. Our attorneys argued successfully in court that the real choice, the true power in who can use a voucher and who can’t, is in the hands of the private school operator.

Private schools use litmus tests like family wealth (a big one), race, religion, academic/athletic ability, disabilities, and any other reason for accepting or rejecting a student.

And here’s the kicker: they don’t have to explain anything. 

We have the people of Ohio on our side. 

We won at the lower court level where Judge Jaiza Page ruled EdChoice private school vouchers are unconstitutional, and we believe we will be successful when the 10th District Court of Appeals rules sometime later this year.

Here is a photo of Bill Phillis, who led the charge to successfully sue the state over the school funding formula and is leading our effort to challenge the constitutionality of EdChoice private school vouchers.

More than 330 school districts, and growing, have signed onto our historic lawsuit.

Is your district one of them? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Stop by our booth in the Bricker Building. We’ll be here through Sunday.