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Good Tuesday morning,

Local public schools are the bedrock of our communities.

Of course, they are not perfect, but most people love their public schools down to the building.

Want proof?

Have you ever seen the fights that break out when a school district starts talking about closing some buildings?

Let’s take that a step further.

Most people in their communities feel connected to their local schools, have children enrolled, or their children graduated from the district so when public officials start talking about consolidating schools it makes a lot of local folks antsy and angry.

Why are we bringing this up?

Because Lake County Auditor Chris Galloway is talking about consolidating public schools across Ohio.

Galloway believes we have two many districts: 607. Read about his ideas here.

He’s using a tired and trite argument that the schools could save money by consolidating services.

Is Galloway an expert? Hardly. He sat on Gov. Mike DeWine’s Property Tax Working Group and his answer is to consolidate, cut spending to local schools, and save on labor costs.

Galloway doesn’t mention the legislature and Gov. DeWine shortchanged public schools when they decided to junk the Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding Plan that would have funded public schools at a constitutional level.

Galloway doesn’t delve into the fact that at the same time Republican lawmakers and DeWine will spend $1.7 billion on private school vouchers next year with zero oversight academically or financially.

The attack on public schools is real.

We’re keeping it real by suing the state, challenging the constitutionality of the private school voucher scheme.

In June, Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page ruled EdChoice is unconstitutional on three counts. The state is appealing.

We’re not stopping.

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

If not, why not? Learn more here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

“Opportunity Scholarships”

This was the term used to describe private voucher scholarships a long, long time ago when supporters first pushed for the program as a way to help low-income students escape “failing schools.”

What a lie.

In state after state where there has been an explosion of private school vouchers and the income limits have skyrocketed or, like in Ohio, there are no income limits, the opportunity for poor families to participate has been a pipe dream.

In North Carolina, a study this summer found the state’s private schools, many of which are exclusive and discriminate, have raised their tuition.

This is happening in Ohio as well. Private schools take the voucher – $6,165 for K-8 and $8,407 for high school students – and raise their tuition so poor families must dip into their family budgets or they can’t get in.

Meanwhile, wealthy families see the voucher cover part of their cost so it’s a refund and rebate program for them and a get rich scheme for private, mostly religious, schools.

Maybe vouchers should be called Opportunistic Scholarships?

It’s sad.

There are real life consequences to this horrendous policy.

Look no further than the Columbus public schools, our state’s largest. Despite voters approving a $100 million levy in 2023, the district is facing tough decisions to make $50 million in cuts ranging from closing school buildings to not transporting children in buses to and from school.

When the state abandoned the Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding Plan earlier this year and passed a budget without funding public schools at a constitutional level, Columbus public schools were one of the hardest hit.

A report from Policy Matters Ohio state’s “Ohio’s operating budget for school years 25-26 and 26-27 provides just 9.3 percent of the additional state funding schools need to educate every student.”

Columbus would have received $48.3 million more if the state funded public schools as they should.

Columbus homeowners, businesses, families and the community are doing their part. The levy they passed is being squandered as the state betrays Columbus students and public school students all across Ohio.

At the same time they are shortchanging public schools, they approved giving $1.7 billion to private schools in the next two years with absolutely zero strings attached. Zero!

This is why we’re in court. This is why we are suing and challenging the constitutionality of the EdChoice private school voucher scheme.

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

If not, why not? Learn more here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

If you are a long-time reader, thank you.

If you are new to our list, welcome!

Each Tuesday morning, we send out an email talking about our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the EdChoice private school voucher scheme that will cost taxpayers $1.7 billion in the next two years.

Here’s the good news: We’ve already won our case in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. Judge Jaiza Page ruled EdChoice is unconstitutional on three counts. It is now being appealed by the state and out-of-state pro voucher interests to the 10th District Court of Appeals.

Here’s more good news: you will get information like the above each week and you will never be asked to donate to our cause like so many other emails that fill your inbox.

We raise money for our lawsuit by asking districts joining our coalition to pay $2 per student per year. For most of the public schools in the state, that is less than one high school voucher.

The state gives private schools $8,407 for high school students and $6,165 for K-12 students.

We also try to keep you apprised of what is happening with the effort by pro-voucher billionaires to expand these programs in other states and the pushback by grass roots coalitions like Vouchers Hurt Ohio.

In some states, public school groups have gone to their governor or their legislatures to fight vouchers, but in Ohio we do not have that option.

Our governor and state lawmakers are intent on Ohio becoming the Wild West of private school vouchers.

There are no income caps, meaning billionaires and millionaires are eligible for vouchers.

The vast majority of families taking vouchers are wealthy and already had their children enrolled in a private school so this is a refund and a rebate program.

More than 90 percent of the private schools taking vouchers are religious in nature.

It’s only going to get worse if we don’t fight.

Local public schools are already being forced to go back to their local taxpayers with levy requests to fill the holes in their budgets from the state shortchanging funding for public schools.

And there is a movement to expand the use of tax dollars for new construction and building repairs for private schools, at the same time many public schools wait in line for assistance from the state to upgrade their facilities.

If this upsets you, and it should, you can get involved.

Check to see if your school district is part of our lawsuit here.

If not, contact your local school board members, superintendent and treasurer and ask them to stand up for your public schools and protect local taxpayers by joining our coalition.

Learn how to join our coalition here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

When anti-public school lawmakers abandoned the Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding Plan and decided to siphon $1.7 billion in tax dollars away to private school vouchers, the pressure to fill the local void with more and more levies was inevitable.

We are less than five weeks from Election Day and more and more districts have levies on the ballot.

What did we expect?

Here’s the rub. These levies cause a great deal of friction and fractions in our local communities and anti-public school lawmakers in Columbus don’t mind that at all.

Another problem: What happens when voters, who are already upset about rising property taxes, say no to the levy?

In Westerville, north of Columbus, the school board has already approved $20 million in budget cuts if their budget fails in November.

The district already reduced its budget by $4.8 million when a levy failed in March.

Westerville will cut 10 administrative positions, up to 44 elementary school jobs, including librarians, art, physical ed and music teachers. The district will be forced to eliminate 31 middle school positions, including math, science and reading, and 19 positions in the high school, including AP and College Credit Plus offerings.

In all, at least 124 positions could be eliminated if the levy fails.

Policy Matters Ohio analyzed the two-year budget and the loss of state funding for each school district when lawmakers shelved the Fair School Funding Plan.

Westerville schools, if Cupp Patterson were fully funded, would have received an additional $6 million from the state. This funding would help tremendously, but instead lawmakers are shifting precious tax dollars to private, religious schools and giving refunds and rebates to wealthy parents to enroll their children in those schools.

Westerville is just one example of the wave of levies to come because the state is once again shirking its responsibility to fully fund public schools as required by the Ohio Constitution.

This is why we are suing and why Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page ruled earlier this year that the EdChoice private school voucher program is unconstitutional on three counts.

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

If not, why not? Learn more here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning

Mike Curtin’s credentials are impeccable.

He is the former editor and associate publisher for the Columbus Dispatch, a two-term state lawmaker who served on the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission.

Curtin recently wrote a deep-dive article looking at the history of funding public schools with taxpayers in Ohio and the decision by voters 175 years ago to stop tax dollars from going to private, religious schools.

You can read Curtin’s excellent article here: Why Ohioans said private schools shouldn’t be funded with our money 174 years ago | Opinion

Curtin points out what voters were thinking on June 17, 1851 when they voted to adopt an Ohio Constitution that explicitly states no tax dollars shall go to private, religious schools.

Why does this matter with our lawsuit?

Curtin writes: “these questions are paramount because the (Ohio Supreme) court’s majority (6-1) Republicans all profess fidelity to originalist judicial philosophy – to apply the law as written and understood at the time of its adoption.”

Curtin quotes current Ohio Supreme Court justices on the idea of originality.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy vows: “As justices, we are required to faithfully, fairly and impartially uphold the law as written. We do not rewrite it or legislate from the bench.”

Curtin quotes Justice R. Patrick DeWine (he’s Gov. Mike DeWine’s son) from a December article for the Ohio State Law Journal pledging adherence to “an original public meaning approach to the Ohio Constitution.”

Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page, who ruled in June that the EdChoice private school voucher program is unconstitutional on three counts, quoted “the plain words of delegates to Ohio’s Constitutional Convention of 1850-51, who adopted language to ensure school funds of the state would be used solely to support common (public) schools.”

Curtin points out: “On Dec. 5, 1850, delegate Samson Mason, a Clark County lawyer, explained the common-school language was intended to ensure “the whole religious community in fact shall be forever excluded from any participation in the school fund of the state, and that because they are religious.”

Delegate Samuel Nash, a Gallia County lawyer, Curtin notes, followed: “Every citizen has, and will have a right to participate in the means of education; but the intention of the provision merely is, that no organized body of Christians, as such, shall be entitled to lay its hands upon the school funds of the state and appropriate it to the furtherance of their own particular views…It means merely that neither Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, or the Catholic church shall have the power to seize upon the public funds and appropriate them to suit itself.”

Now wouldn’t these ideas be reassuring to originalists like former U.S. Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia?

Please read Curtin’s complete article.

And ask yourself, is your school district part of our historic lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Learn more here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio