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Good Tuesday morning,

The state is on track, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, of spending $1.175 billion on vouchers for the school year that just ended on June 30.

EdChoice, the subject of our lawsuit, gets the bulk of the money because in 2023 pro-voucher, anti-public school lawmakers expanded the program by removing income limits.

Les Wexner, the billionaire, is eligible for a partial voucher in Ohio.

Laura Hancock at the Plain Dealer writes: “Before universal income eligibility, in the 2022-23 school year, the state spend $610.2 million to educate 80,026 students in the five voucher programs. It jumped more than $300 million the next year.”

What happened? Wealthy families who had their children already enrolled started getting a voucher for basically a refund or a rebate on their tuition.

Religious voucher schools raised their tuition to capture the voucher, charge the wealthy families a little less, and it was a win-win for everyone except the public school children, public schools and taxpayers.

You can read Laura’s story here.

It’s only going to grow unless we do something to stop it.

EdChoice private school vouchers were declared unconstitutional on three counts by Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page on June 24, 2025. The state and outside pro-voucher counsel appealed that decision to the 10th District Court of Appeals, where it is now under consideration.

We know this case will end up before the Ohio Supreme Court and we are confident we are going to win.

Is your district part of our historic lawsuit to protect public schools and your local taxpayers? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

With the Fourth coming up this week, we’re going to brief.

We need your help, and it’s so easy.

If you follow us, and interact with us, on social media, you help spread the word about how EdChoice private school vouchers are hurting our public schools, our students, our communities, our taxpayers and our state.

Follow us on Facebook here.

On X (Twitter) here.

On Instagram here.

See, that wasn’t so hard.

And when you are on those platforms, interact with us so that our reach extends to others like you who are standing up for public schools.

Have a great Fourth of July and let’s keep working together to protect our schools.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

A week ago tonight, four school board members stood up for their local schools, their students, and their taxpayers and voted to join our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the harmful EdChoice private school voucher scheme.

Bravo.

Mentor is a district in Lake County represented by state Rep. Jamie Callender, the sponsor of the School Bully Bill proposal that would punish school districts financially for joining our lawsuit.

Mentor is also the district represented by state Sen. Jerry Cirino, who supports Callender’s idea. Cirino’s daughter is on the Mentor school board and voted against joining the lawsuit.

Enough about them. Let’s talk about the public school heroes.

First, there is John Sanford, a retired educator who lives in Mentor. He organized an online fundraiser, and the community chipped in more than $14,000 to pay the cost of Mentor joining the lawsuit.

Then there are the four board members who voted yes: President Maggie A. Cook, Vice-President Lauren Marchaza, Robert Haag, and Daniel Hardesty.

Times are tough in Mentor thanks to lawmakers like Callender and Cirino who are steering $1.7 billion in state tax dollars to EdChoice vouchers while shortchanging public schools across the state by $3 billion.

Mentor has made $6.6 million in cuts to staffing, transportation and student services and they are going to ask voters, who rejected a 4.9-mill operating levy in May, to raise their local taxes again to make up for the state’s neglect.

As the state continues to shift money to vouchers and underfund public schools, local boards, superintendents and treasurers either have to cut services to their students or ask local taxpayers to increase their burden.

That over-reliance on local property taxes is one of the reasons the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the school funding formula unconstitutional in the historic DeRolph decision.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on the meeting, and you can read the story here.

Some highlights:

Board member Lauren Marchaza said Mentor has already made hard choices, including redistricting, building closures and operational changes, while state leaders have continued to expand vouchers and limit public school funding.

Marchaza said more than $9 million connected to students attending private schools within Mentor’s boundaries are tied to voucher funding.

“That $9 million is money that could and absolutely should be staying right here to lower the financial burden on our local property taxes,” Marchaza said, adding the voucher program is “essentially charging Mentor taxpayers to fund a duplicate school system.”

Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page ruled a year ago in June that EdChoice vouchers are unconstitutional on three counts, including one count that vouchers create a separate and unequal system of schools.

More and more districts are joining our lawsuit because local board members understand that state lawmakers will continue to shift the burden of paying public schools to local taxpayers while they spend more and more on EdChoice vouchers that are going primarily to wealthy families whose children were already enrolled in private, mostly religious schools.

We believe this is unconstitutional.

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

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

In May, attorneys for the state, and the Institute for Justice, an out-of-state intervenor in our EdChoice private school voucher lawsuit, bombed big time before the 10th District Court of Appeals.

Keith Neely, with the Institute, had a lump-in-the-throat exchange with Morgan Trau, a reporter for WEWS TV in Cleveland.

“The argument this morning, I think, went well for us,” Neely said after the hearing.

“You genuinely thought it went well?” I asked him, Trau reported.

“I do think that the argument went well on some of our claims…” Neely said. “Ultimately, I think we all recognize that this case is going to go to the Ohio Supreme Court one way or another.”

The appellate court judges will eventually rule on the case, but Neely expects the panel, all of them Democrats, to side with the schools.

He believes, eventually, the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court will rule in his favor, Trau reported.

Unable to make a constitutional case for vouchers, attorneys defending the problematic program are resorting to writing everything off as political.

Don’t believe it.

We have faith in the judicial system.

We won at the Common Pleas court level on the merits of our case. Judge Jaiza Page ruled that three of the counts we raised against EdChoice were correct and the program was unconstitutional.

We witnessed our attorneys argue, we believe, successfully before the 10th District Court of Appeals and we watched as the pro-voucher attorneys stumbled so badly that a Cleveland Plain Dealer headline stated: “Ohio’s school voucher house of cards is collapsing in court. The state’s defense is embarrassing.”

We believe we will be successful before the Ohio Supreme Court as well.

Our counts are all based on a strict, originalist reading of the Ohio Constitution, and the Ohio Supreme Court is composed of a majority of originalist justices. The language is so clear, plain, and in black and white that we believe Antonin Scalia would have agreed with us.

Our Ohio Supreme Court is not issuing rulings in a judicial vacuum. There is precedent in the Ohio Supreme Court on this issue already. The justices will have to take into consideration rulings by Judge Page and the 10th District Court of Appeals.

In addition, courts in state after state are ruling against vouchers. Interestingly, the constitutions in many of those states, often written around the same time as Ohio, are strikingly similar in their language protecting religious freedom and emphasizing the critical importance of the separation of church and state.

EdChoice vouchers are unpopular and growing in unpopularity. In 2024, pro-voucher groups asked voters in three states to approve voucher programs at the ballot box, including Kentucky where Donald Trump won overwhelmingly.

In all three states, voters said NO.

Voters have never passed a ballot initiative in any state to support vouchers.

Ohio State Supreme Court justices are elected, responsible to the people and to their oath of office to the Ohio Constitution.

They are not immune to the consensus of the people of our state. Our Steering Committee Chair, former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown, who has sat on the court, believes the justices will take very seriously their duty to abide by and follow the Ohio Constitution.

Mike Curtin, a former editor and associate publisher of the Columbus Dispatch, a former two-term Ohio House member who served on the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission, researched and reported a great piece on the language barring the use of public tax dollars to pay for private, mostly religious schools.

Curtin makes a compelling case for why the Ohio Supreme Court will find vouchers unconstitutional based on their originalist beliefs.

It is well worth your time to read here.

Anyone who tells you the Ohio Supreme Court will rule against us because of party affiliation hasn’t done their homework.

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

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

Here’s a headline that probably took state Rep. Jamie Callender and state Sen. Jerry Cirino down a notch last week after both skipped an invitation to speak at the Mentor School Board meeting where vouchers were discussed.

Mentor schools are fighting for survival , so why won’t their state reps show up to explain themselves?…read the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

You remember Callender? He introduced the Public School Bully bill, beat his chest for a few days stating he was going to punish school districts that joined our lawsuit by withholding all their state funding and then promptly backed down after seeing the severe backlash to his mean-spirited and unconstitutional idea.

Callender and Cirino represent Mentor. So does state Rep. Dan Troy, who attended the meeting along with Dan Heintz, speaking on behalf of Vouchers Hurt Ohio.

Here’s how the Plain Dealer reported the situation: “The district is staring down serious budget pressure and has now twice gone to voters for a tax levy — and twice been turned down. A third attempt is being drafted. Mentor also is weighing whether to join more than 300 other school districts in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Ohio’s private school voucher program.”

Chris Quinn, the Plain Dealer editor, said: “It’s a very bad look. I think they were looking for real information and (Cirino) blew him off. What kind of state senator does that?”

Quinn continued: “Mentor is one of the largest school districts in Cirino’s senate district. And the issue at hand — where hundreds of millions in public money goes — is one he has influenced as the head of the Senate finance committee.”

Lawmakers live in the Statehouse bubble where they pat one another on the back and quietly joke, “hey, what’s a little Constitution between friends?”

House Speaker Matt Huffman told the Columbus Dispatch, “we kind of do what we want.”

It’s a different story when they have to leave the safe Statehouse confines, and actually meet with the people of Ohio and look them in the eyes and try to explain the EdChoice voucher boondoggle.

It’s not easy justifying giving wealthy families a refund and a rebate and giving $1.7 billion in our public tax dollars to private, mostly religious schools – an idea a judge in Ohio has already ruled is unconstitutional on three counts.

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

If not, why isn’t your board, superintendent and treasurer standing up for public schools, public school children and taxpayers? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio