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Wealthy suburban schools have been joining Vouchers Hurt Ohio at a fast pace because they see and feel the immediate impact of losing millions of dollars to private school vouchers.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that vouchers hurt rural schools.

According to the National Rural Education Association (NREA), rural schools across the country serve more than 10 million students, and half of those students, nearly five million children, come from low-income homes.

Like Ohio, these rural schools are not able to raise large amounts of local tax dollars because their property values are often lower compared to other areas of the state.

Rural schools in Ohio and many states are more dependent on the state to ensure there is enough money for each child to receive a high quality education.

Ohio lawmakers have abandoned the Fair School Funding Plan that would have funded all schools, including rural schools, at a constitutional level.

At the same time, legislative leaders are siphoning away more than $1 billion in tax dollars for private school operators and an unregulated, unaccountable private school voucher program.

You can see why rural schools are taking one for the wealthy team of families and private school operators when it comes to vouchers.

In other states where vouchers have drained rural schools, the consequences have been devastating to rural communities.

In West Virginia and Arizona, according to the NREA, rural schools have been forced to close.

In Indiana, there have been increasing calls for consolidation of local schools and school districts.

Keep in mind, in many of these small towns and rural districts in Ohio, the local public school is their identity and means everything. Everything.

Vouchers don’t help poor families. Vouchers don’t help rural schools. Vouchers hurt low-income students, rural schools and all of Ohio.

This is a plague. The cure is our lawsuit. Vouchers are going on trial.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Earlier this year, House Speaker Matt Huffman said a constitutional funding formula for Ohio’s public schools was a “fantasy,” and “unsustainable.”

The House, under Huffman’s leadership, scrapped the Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding Plan while earmarking hundreds of millions of public tax dollars to private school operators.

As the two-year state budget moved to the Ohio Senate, public school advocates remained hopeful that lawmakers might come to their senses, recognize their constitutional duty to fund public schools, and restore the Fair School Funding Plan.

Fat chance.

Instead, state Sen. Jerry Cirino, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told school supporters to get on board with their plan or “it could only get worse for you.”

These anti-public school lawmakers aren’t listening to reason. They want their way without static.

Cirino told cleveland.com he isn’t trying to chill free speech.

Right.

This is why we are suing the state, challenging the constitutionality of the harmful private school voucher program known as EdChoice.

If we could reason with lawmakers, we would.

But there is no reasoning with people like Jerry Cirino and Matt Huffman.

Here is the good news.

Vouchers are going on trial this year in Franklin County.

More good news.

More than 300 public schools have joined our lawsuit and more are joining every day.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

We appreciate the growing support from good Ohioans like you for our lawsuit, our public schools, our students, teachers, taxpayers and communities.

Each Tuesday, we send this email to you to keep you up-to-date on our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the harmful EdChoice private school voucher scheme that is siphoning away $1 billion in tax dollars a year from our local public schools.

We also let you know about the new dangers to our communities being advanced by an extreme anti-public school majority in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.

They are relentless.

Recently, anti-public school lawmakers have pushed to rip off the financial reserves paid for by local taxpayers to ensure local schools can put together five-year spending plans and avoid returning to voters with levies.

But that’s not all.

These same lawmakers want to make it more difficult for local schools to pass levies by raising the threshold from a simple majority of 50-plus one to 60 percent.

In 2023, many of these same lawmakers tried to amend the Ohio Constitution to raise the threshold for passing ballot initiatives to 60 percent and Ohio voters wholeheartedly and resoundingly rejected that nonsense.

It gets even worse in Columbus. These same lawmakers also want to prohibit public school committees from any contact with voters 30 days before an election in which a levy is on the ballot.

These are the same people who justify dark money in politics by claiming corporations should be allowed to secretly fund campaigns because their actions are protected by the free speech ideals in the First Amendment.

Hypocrites. Yes.

There is so much going on that you should be aware of that we can’t possibly put it all in a weekly email, but we do regularly post on these issues as they arise on our social media platforms.

Do you follow us on Facebook? Check here.

How about X or Twitter? Check here.

Or Instagram? Check here.

They don’t want you to be informed. Stay with us. We are going to keep putting a white hot spotlight on them.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning

Let’s keep it real for a moment.

We don’t oppose private schools. We are not against religious schools.

We believe it is unconstitutional for tax dollars to pay for private education.

We believe it is unconstitutional for private religious schools to receive tax dollars for tuition.

Recently, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) effectively blocked the creation of the nation’s first religious charter school in Oklahoma.

SCOTUS deadlocked on the issue 4-4 and therefore the lower court ruling in Oklahoma remains in place.

Oklahoma ruled religions public charter schools would violate both the state and federal constitutions. Read the story here.

Our lawsuit does not challenge the state’s charter school system.

But we have long been concerned that charter schools in Ohio would convert to religious schools.

Why?

They would receive more money per pupil.

Also, converting to religious schools would mean zero financial or academic accountability.

The SCOTUS ruling raises serious questions about tax dollars going to private schools.

We believe we have a winning court case and that vouchers will go on trial in 2025.

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

If not, why not. Learn how to join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

Tom Suddes was a respected long-time reporter at the Statehouse for the Cleveland Plain Dealer before becoming a professor at Ohio University.

He now writes a syndicated column that runs in publications across the state where he uses his experience as a keen observer of the Ohio General Assembly and his encyclopedic knowledge of Ohio politics, people and events to pound home his points.

Suddes recently wrote a column about the legislature turning their back on funding public schools at a constitutional level while channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to private school vouchers.

Read the column here.

Here are some excerpts from the column:

“Legislators have plenty of money for Ohio’s school voucher (“scholarship”) programs, which spend state tax dollars to help Ohio parents send their children to private schools,” writes Suddes.

“Voucher spending has exploded. The non-partisan Legislative Service Commission reports that Ohio – with the General Assembly’s say-so – spent $395 million for vouchers in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020. Total voucher-spending skyrocketed to $961 million in the year that ended last June 30, a 143% increase,” writes Suddes.

“So: There’s enough money, likely ($1 billion-plus next year) to subsidize private schools, but not enough to achieve statewide fairness in funding public schools?” writes Suddes.

“Next time homeowners see yet more school-levy requests on their ballots (and they will), it likely won’t be their school boards’ fault. It’ll be the General Assembly’s.” Suddes writes.

It won’t be the school boards’ fault, but local educators will feel the heat from local homeowners and taxpayers because they will be forced to go back again and again with levies to make up for the lost dollars from the state.

This is why we say again and again that Vouchers Hurt Ohio, hurt parents, students, teachers, educators, taxpayers, and our communities.

The legislature is not going to change course. They are laser-focused on privatizing education and they do not care a whit about the damage to public schools.

This is why we are suing and challenging the constitutionality of the private school voucher program known as EdChoice.

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

If not, why not? Learn how to join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio