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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

Good Tuesday morning,

Last week, William L. Phillis, who heads the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, and Vouchers Hurt Ohio, traveled to Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County to meet with superintendents from Appalachian counties.

Phillis talked about our lawsuit and how public schools are being harmed by the private school voucher program known as EdChoice.

Appalachian schools were at the heart of the historic and successful DeRolph lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s funding system for public schools in the 1990s.

In this new century and millennium, we are embarking on a new historic lawsuit and we need the public schools in Appalachia to join our effort.

Many have already. Here is a list of the schools on our website.

We have more than 300 public school districts that have joined our lawsuit for one or more years since the 20-21 school year representing Appalachia, rural, urban and suburban areas of the state.

This year alone, we have grown by more than 10 percent, adding 30 new school districts. The fastest growth has been in wealthy, suburban districts that have been hard hit by the loss of public funds to private schools.

But all schools are losing because the legislature has decided to get rid of their plans to fully fund public education at a constitutional level by throwing out the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan.

While universal vouchers have hit suburban districts in the gut, Appalachian schools are the big losers with the abandonment of Cupp-Patterson.

A recent report found Appalachian schools would lose $565.8 million in state funding in the next two-year budget relative to what they would have received if Cupp-Patterson were funded instead of being folded.

You can read about it here.

Many Appalachian districts are standing up for their public schools and their local taxpayers by joining the lawsuit, but many are not.

Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio

Good Tuesday morning,

In late April, Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page set aside three days in her courtroom to entertain motions from attorneys representing the defendants in our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the EdChoice private school voucher program.

The pro-voucher crowd has deep pockets, including the state of Ohio that is willing to spend countless tax dollars to defend what we believe is the indefensible.

Also, outside groups funded by anti-public school billionaires like Koch Industries and Betsy DeVos, had well-heeled, expensive lawyers on hand to try to convince Judge Page that Vouchers Hurt Ohio didn’t have a case worth trying.

But our attorneys made great points and answered all questions posed and we are confident that Judge Page will rule that a trial is merited and set a court date soon.

We are suing EdChoice on five counts.

Count 1 is the Ohio Constitution is clear that the legislature shall create a single system of common schools for the common good, and private school vouchers create a separate system of unequal and uncommon schools that benefit the wealthy with zero financial or academic accountability for the private school operators. That’s unconstitutional.

Count 2 relates to the unconstitutional school funding formula in Ohio. The Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding plan would have fully funded public schools, but that plan has been scrapped and deemed “unsustainable,” and a “fantasy.”

Here’s the deal. The funding for private school vouchers comes from the exact same line item in the state budget that pays for public schools so a dollar more for EdChoice is a dollar less available, literally, for public schools.

When the state shortchanges public schools, local school boards must go to voters to make up the difference with levies, and the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that a funding system over-reliant on local property taxes is unconstitutional.

Count 3 puts a spotlight on the sad fact that vouchers increase segregation in our public schools. Private schools pick and choose who gets in and who is left behind, and family income is becoming a critical component in the private school voucher scheme.

With the introduction of universal vouchers where everyone, regardless of income, is eligible, private school operators have raised tuition to capture the full voucher and also charge families tuition. Poor families cannot afford the extra tuition and are being left behind ironically in a system that was initially sold as a way to give them a choice.

Private school operators have the real power of choice. They choose their students based on income, race, religion, athletic or academic ability, disabilities, etc. We believe this is unconstitutional.

Count 4 quotes the Ohio Constitution because it is plain as day that our framers did not want public tax dollars going to private, religious schools. “No religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

Could it be any clearer? Yet, more than 90 percent of the private schools taking in hundreds of millions of tax dollars are religious.

Count 5 speaks to the idea that we are all equal under the Ohio Constitution, and private school vouchers grant special privileges to a special class of people in our state. We believe that’s unconstitutional.

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

If not, why not? Join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio