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Here’s an interesting story from Poland, Ohio, a southern suburb of Youngstown in the northeast part of the state. Read it here.

Stephen Hanzely has been going to his local school board meetings asking them to join our lawsuit.

Hanzely is a retired Youngstown State University Professor who started with a letter to the Poland school board on June 3.

He points out that the number of students in Poland taking vouchers has grown from 20 to 200 since Senate President Matt Huffman and state lawmakers made the EdChoice private school voucher program available to wealthy families in every part of the state.

The Poland school board members have placed the item on the agenda for their October 23 meeting.

Local voices matter.

In Upper Arlington earlier this year, the school board joined our lawsuit after a number of local residents formed a group and called, emailed and appeared before the board to explain why Vouchers Hurt Upper Arlington.

Vouchers Hurt Poland.

Vouchers Hurt all public schools, public school children, teachers, parents, taxpayers and our local communities because it is a ripoff for the rich and creates a separate and unequal system of schools.

We believe that is unconstitutional and that’s why we are suing the state.

Do you want to form a local group of people in your community to talk to your school board members about joining our historic lawsuit?

Email Bill Phillis at ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net to find out more.

Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.

Great, seems we’re the shining example for the education policies being promoted by Project 2025, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

Now, we don’t buy into conspiracies, but we do recognize when like-minded people get together with an agenda.

Exhibit A is the Center for Christian Virtue’s recent “Essential Summit.”

The summit featured Kevin Roberts, the leader of Project 2025, and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, the architect behind the explosive, unaccountable $1 billion boondoggle private school voucher program.

Project 2025 was written by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for the first 180 days of a like-minded president. Former President Donald Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025.

Read about it here.

The Center for Christian Virtue, you may recall, made a $5 million investment in a building overlooking the Statehouse in Columbus, and has been pushing for the expansion of vouchers.

Part of the Center’s “Ohio Ministry Network,” is the Ohio Christian Education Network, which is sustained through membership dues – $5 per pupil up to $3,000 per school – from Christian schools.

We bring this up because summits ain’t cheap and this was a doozy.

In August, the Ohio Capital Journal’s Megan Henry wrote how Project 2025’s education policies mirror the legislation introduced and passed in Ohio and universal private school vouchers.

Read Megan’s story here.

Again, we don’t believe in conspiracies, but these people do think alike.

Like they think the U.S. Dept. of Education should be abolished, and the Office of Head Start eliminated, and universal vouchers implemented across the land.

Christina Collins is a former member of the formerly funded and quasi-independent State Board of Education.

She is now the Executive Director for Honesty for Ohio Education, and Collins told the Capital Journal that it’s as though the Ohio General Assembly has been bringing many of the policies outlined in Project 2025 to the Buckeye State already.

“It’s almost like Ohio knew what Project 2025 was going to go for, and that our legislature was like, let’s just get ahead of it. Let’s just start implementing,” Collins said.

“What’s embedded in Project 2025 with these Christian Nationalism values is one form of educating children,” Collins said. “It’s restrictive. It prevents the freedom of knowledge. It prevents the freedom of learning. It is not inclusive, and it is not an honest education.”

It’s something else alright, including being bought, paid and promoted with our public tax dollars.

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

If not, why not. Join here or email ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net for more information.

In Texas, they’re talking about the $1 billion boondoggle private school voucher program in Ohio.

Why? Because our universal voucher program is funding private religious school campus renovations and expansion.

We’re building religious schools with taxpayer dollars.

Ohio “will allow the state to provide millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, thanks to a bill passed by its Legislature this summer. The bill aims to increase the capacity of religious schools so they can absorb more voucher students, according to Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman.”

This can be found in an article in the ReformAustin media outlet. Read all about it here.

ReformAustin (Texas) is following up on an in depth investigation conducted by ProPublica, which begins their report with a profound and shocking sentence: “The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.”

ProPublica goes on to say: “While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman.”

“…the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.”

Read the ProPublica investigation here.

Meanwhile, public school children continue to attend schools in buildings that need renovated, need new classrooms, and need playground improvements.

This is one of the counts in our lawsuit. The Ohio Constitution is crystal clear. The legislature shall create a single system of common schools for the common good. Private school vouchers create a separate, unequal system of schools primarily for the privileged and wealthy.

Need proof? Long forgotten is the idea that private school vouchers were for poor families. Poor families can’t afford to enroll in the vast majority of private schools because the tuition exceeds the amount of the state voucher.

So vouchers are providing refunds and rebates for wealthy families, including millionaires, who already had enrolled their children in private schools, and hundreds of millions of dollars to private school operators, primarily religious schools.

Here’s the good news.

We have less than five weeks before the historic trial begins. Yes, on Monday, Nov. 4, vouchers go on trial in Franklin County in Judge Jaiza Page’s courtroom.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to get involved here.

Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina recently vetoed legislation in that state that would have spent $6 billion on private school vouchers over the next decade.

Here is what the governor said:

“Private school vouchers are the biggest threat to public schools in decades. Vouchers crater state budgets, with rural schools being hurt the worst.”

Crater state budgets! Rural schools hurt the worst. Read about it here.

Gov. Cooper is right.

In Ohio, right now, rural public schools, the bedrock of so many small town and village communities in our state, are being ripped off as the state stalls for time on fully funding them while siphoning away hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily for religious schools miles and counties away.

In some states, like Texas and Tennessee, rural lawmakers have rebelled because they understand the value of their public schools, and some of them have been punished for doing so by pro-voucher, anti-public school front groups like the Americans For Prosperity.

There is a national blueprint for voucher expansion, an agenda set by ALEC, AFP, the Koch Family, Betsy DeVos and others.

In state after state, the plan is to create a separate and unequal system of private schools with universal vouchers.

In North Carolina, the Supreme Court ordered the state to put more public dollars into public schools. Sound familiar?

We would have a funding formula in Ohio that is constitutional if not for the billions of dollars spent on vouchers and charter schools in the past 25 years.

The good news is vouchers go on trial in Ohio on Nov. 4 in Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page’s courtroom.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to get involved here.

Good news out of South Carolina.

The South Carolina Supreme Court recently ruled that vouchers are unconstitutional.

Justice Gary Hill wrote the program violates the state’s constitutional prohibition against public dollars directly benefiting private schools.

“The dissent claims our decision ‘pulls the rug out’ from under the feet of the General Assembly and ‘ultimately, the feet of the students the law was designed to serve,” Justice Hill writes. “Our duty is to serve the Constitution, the supreme policy of our land. As such, our obligation is not to allow a rug to cover up well marked constitutional ground, no matter how inconvenient that ground may prove to be.

“The entire concept behind the Constitution and the rule of law is that the end cannot justify the means,” he continued.

Read the story here.

All along, we’ve said Vouchers Hurt Ohio is not alone. In state after state, organizations like ours have organically arisen to push back against anti-public school extremists pushing a pro-voucher agenda.

The South Carolina decision is critical to saving public schools for all children.

We are challenging the state’s unconstitutional EdChoice private school voucher program that is no more than a refund and rebate program for wealthy parents, and a financial boondoggle for private school operators, primarily religious schools.

Our fourth count is based on just reading the language in the Ohio Constitution: Article VI, section 2: School Funds…”no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of the state.”

Vouchers go on trial in Ohio beginning Monday, Nov. 4 in Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page’s courtroom.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to get involved here.