When we let vouchers drain our schools, it hurts us all.
December 10, 2024
Good Tuesday morning,
The national media has taken a sniff of what is going on with vouchers in Ohio and they know something stinks.
Recently, The Nation published an extensive article entitled “The Existential Threat Facing Ohio’s Public School System.
You can read it here:
Some excerpts:
“Ohio now spends more than $970 million on private school voucher scholarships.”
The Nation quotes our lawsuit:
“Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio’s public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio’s foundation funding – the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio’s public schools – otherwise available to already struggling school districts for the education of their students.”
It samples work from the Dayton Daily News:
“In Montgomery, Miami, Greene, Warren, Butler and Clark counties, for example, use of EdChoice vouchers increased by 313 percent, according to Dayton Daily News reporter Eileen McClory, but enrollment at schools that accept vouchers grew by only 3.7 percent.”
The Nation quotes Dan Heintz, a board member for Cleveland Heights-University Heights:
“The whole notion that people were using vouchers to escape failing public schools was nonsense, because the kids had never attended,” he said. “The only thing that they were escaping is a tuition bill.”
And Polly Taylor Gerken, a Toledo Public School board member:
“We had kids that would get put out because private schools don’t have to take a kid with a disability. They can discriminate based on race. They can discriminate based on disability. They can discriminate based on family composition. So it’s not about school choice because schools are the ones choosing kids.”
The Nation also quotes William Phillis, Executive Director for the Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding:
“There are school districts that have had to cut art, music, physical education—a lot of programming out of the public system because the money’s not available to fund those programs. And it’s not that we don’t have enough money. It’s that a lot of the money for public education is being siphoned out of the public school system and given to charters and vouchers.”
The Nation is watching. We are not alone. In state after state where universal vouchers are being pushed by puppet groups with strings attached to billionaires like Betsy DeVos and the Koch Family, public school supporters are organizing to fight back to protect their local schools.
Vouchers go on trial in 2025 in Franklin County before Judge Jaiza Page.
Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.
If not, why not? Join here.
Sincerely,
Vouchers Hurt Ohio
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