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Good Tuesday morning,

Over the holidays and into January, we are seeing more and more public school districts sign on to our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the $1 billion boondoggle EdChoice private school voucher scheme.

In the Mahoning Valley, near Youngstown and Warren, boards of education for the Poland Local Schools and Canfield Local Schools in Mahoning County recently voted to join the lawsuit.

In nearby Trumbull County, the Howland Local Schools board of education voted to join, and board members in Liberty Local Schools in the same area are considering joining.

In Franklin County, in Central Ohio, Groveport Madison Schools voted to sign on to the lawsuit joining other districts in the county that include Upper Arlington, Bexley, Worthington, Gahanna, Westerville, and the state’s largest district, Columbus City Schools.

Meanwhile in southwest Ohio, the Wyoming City School district in Hamilton County also joined.

We are suing the voucher program and have outlined five counts or reasons we believe the harmful program is unconstitutional.

The Ohio Constitution clearly states there shall be one system of common schools for the common good, and vouchers creates a separate and unequal system of schools.

The state is underfunding public schools and the education of public school children while siphoning away hundreds of millions of dollars to private school operators for vouchers that are being used as a refund and rebate for a lot of wealthy parents with children already enrolled in private schools.

Private school operators decide who gets in and who is denied admission to their schools using litmus tests like family income, race, religion, academic/athletic ability, disabilities. Public school doors are open to all children.

And the Ohio Constitution is clear that religious schools shall not receive public tax dollars for education, but more than 90 percent of the voucher schools are religious.

We believe we have a strong case and vouchers are scheduled to go on trial this year in Franklin County before Judge Jaiza Page.

More and more public schools agree with us that something must be done to stop the legislature from expanding the voucher program even more.

Is your district part of this historic lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

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Good Tuesday morning and Happy New Year!

Here’s the headline in this morning’s Columbus Dispatch:

“It’s official: Ohio has new GOP Speaker Matt Huffman, Senate President Rob McColley.”
New Ohio House speaker backs school choice, lowering the state’s income tax and limiting access to legal marijuana approved by voters in 2023

Read it here.

Huffman backs school choice and cutting the income tax, which means he wants to expand upon private school vouchers that are already siphoning $1 billion away from public schools while reducing the money available to state lawmakers to return to communities by cutting the income tax.

Let that sink in.

Lawmakers returned for the new two-year legislative session and their priorities are to continue to force local public school districts to go back to local property owners to pay for their local schools.

These lawmakers have until June 30 to pass a new two-year state budget, and if you want to understand their priorities look at where they spend their money.

It is not going to be public schools.

The state began experiencing some belt tightening last year when revenues came in lower than expected and federal one-time funding money dried up.

If they are true to their word, and when it comes to vouchers Huffman has never hidden his intentions, then private school parents and private school operators are going to win and local public schools are going to lose in the two-year budget.

One of our five counts in the lawsuit outlines how the private school voucher program known as EdChoice is unconstitutional because it exacerbates the over-reliance on local property taxes to pay for public schools. This is an issue the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on four times in the landmark DeRolph decision.

Huffman and McColley are not going to change their minds or their direction.

This is why we are suing, to have a fair hearing on this issue in the court of law.

Is your district part of this historic lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

This will be our last email of the year, but we will return with weekly updates beginning January 7, 2025.

Looking back at 2024, we witnessed how the private school voucher program is harming our public schools.

We learned the real choice and power in so-called school choice is in the hands of the private school operators who get to pick and choose their students based on income, athletic or academic talent, religion, race, and disability so the universal voucher program is but a myth.

It is a program for wealthy and religious families as the vast majority of families taking vouchers are just receiving a refund or a rebate for their tuition. They aren’t moving their children from public to religious schools. They were already enrolled.

We learned each dollar more for private schools is a dollar less for public schools so the $1 billion boondoggle for vouchers is literally robbing the public schools to pay the private school pirates.

We learned the pro-voucher gang, backed by billionaires like the Koch family and Betsy DeVos, know exactly what they are doing. This is a calculated plundering of the public treasury and they want the loot, but they don’t want to be held accountable for a single penny financially or a single student academically.

When some state lawmakers proposed financial and academic accountability, the pro-voucher crowd lobbied like there was no tomorrow to gut those oversight ideas from any legislation.

Yes, it was a tough year and you can already see the adverse impact on public schools as more and more local districts are forced to go to local voters with requests for levies or face cutting programs, teachers and staff.

We’ve seen the unfair impact of state mandates that cost public schools like the requirement to provide transportation for all private school students regardless of cost. Do you think the state reimburses public schools for this heavy toll? No way.

We realize this is hard to take, and this is why we are fighting back.

We’ve seen a group of suburban wealthy schools across the state rise up against vouchers and join our lawsuit.

We’ve seen all types of public schools from urban to rural to small town to suburban sign up because they understand we need to save our schools and protect our taxpayers from this ripoff.

We’ve also witnessed a rebellion against voucher expansion in other states with groups deciding the best tactic for them to challenge vouchers.

And we saw voters in three states reject vouchers and school choice when it was put on the ballot for a vote.

Our extreme lawmakers and Gov. DeWine would never put vouchers up for a vote in Ohio because they know it would be a loser for them.

And here is the best news of all for public schools and public school supporters.

Vouchers in Ohio go on trial in 2025.

We’ll repeat that: Vouchers in Ohio go on trial in 2025.

We’re looking forward to the new year.

Is your district part of this historic lawsuit? Check here.

If not, isn’t it time you joined. You don’t want to miss it. Learn how here.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year! See you again in 2025!

Good Tuesday morning,

The national media has taken a sniff of what is going on with vouchers in Ohio and they know something stinks.

Recently, The Nation published an extensive article entitled “The Existential Threat Facing Ohio’s Public School System.

You can read it here:

Some excerpts:

“Ohio now spends more than $970 million on private school voucher scholarships.”

The Nation quotes our lawsuit:

“Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio’s public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio’s foundation funding – the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio’s public schools – otherwise available to already struggling school districts for the education of their students.”

It samples work from the Dayton Daily News:

“In Montgomery, Miami, Greene, Warren, Butler and Clark counties, for example, use of EdChoice vouchers increased by 313 percent, according to Dayton Daily News reporter Eileen McClory, but enrollment at schools that accept vouchers grew by only 3.7 percent.”

The Nation quotes Dan Heintz, a board member for Cleveland Heights-University Heights:

“The whole notion that people were using vouchers to escape failing public schools was nonsense, because the kids had never attended,” he said. “The only thing that they were escaping is a tuition bill.”

And Polly Taylor Gerken, a Toledo Public School board member:

“We had kids that would get put out because private schools don’t have to take a kid with a disability. They can discriminate based on race. They can discriminate based on disability. They can discriminate based on family composition. So it’s not about school choice because schools are the ones choosing kids.”

The Nation also quotes William Phillis, Executive Director for the Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding:

“There are school districts that have had to cut art, music, physical education—a lot of programming out of the public system because the money’s not available to fund those programs. And it’s not that we don’t have enough money. It’s that a lot of the money for public education is being siphoned out of the public school system and given to charters and vouchers.”

The Nation is watching. We are not alone. In state after state where universal vouchers are being pushed by puppet groups with strings attached to billionaires like Betsy DeVos and the Koch Family, public school supporters are organizing to fight back to protect their local schools.

Vouchers go on trial in 2025 in Franklin County before Judge Jaiza Page.

Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

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Stay updated by following us on social media!

Like us on Twitter and follow us on Facebook for daily news and updates.

Senate President Matt Huffman, with the help of Americans For Prosperity, is going to be House Speaker Matt Huffman beginning in January, 2025.

Huffman will undoubtedly serve four two-year terms from 2025 to 2033 as Speaker because he understands as well as anyone how to manipulate the levers of government in his favor.

Huffman is not only a champion for private school vouchers. He has taken the extraordinary step of funneling public tax dollars into private school construction and repair.

Voters don’t like vouchers. Voters don’t like their tax dollars going to private, most often, religious schools for brick and mortar buildings.

The majority of voters would like to see their tax dollars invested in their local public schools.

Huffman doesn’t listen to voters. Not now. Not in the foreseeable future.

He told the Columbus Dispatch at the Statehouse: “We can kind of do what we want.”

And he does.

We know we do not stand a chance in the legislature. We know the governor for the next two years, at least, will go along with Huffman on expanding universal vouchers.

So we are suing. We are challenging the constitutionality of the private school voucher program, known as EdChoice, on five counts, and each count has been accepted for trial by Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page.

Vouchers will go on trial in 2025.

The Ohio Constitution is clear on this issue.

Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.