When we let vouchers drain our schools, it hurts us all.
Vouchers Hurt Ohio is a growing coalition of public school districts that have come together to sue the state over the unconstitutional and harmful private school voucher program.
When we let vouchers drain funds from our public schools, our kids suffer. Students don’t have the resources they need to succeed and we are all hurt as a result.
Vouchers started as a “pilot program,” but quickly ballooned out of control as lawmakers continue to change the criteria for eligibility. Ohio is fast becoming the Wild West for vouchers.
The program has grown from $42 million in 2008 to up to $1 billion in the current two-year budget. EdChoice vouchers are a refund and rebate program for parents who, in many cases, never intended to enroll their children in public schools.
There are no caps on income or spending in the universal voucher plan in Ohio. If someone applies for a voucher, even if they are a millionaire or a billionaire, they are eligible for a private school voucher.
There is no cap on spending in the state budget for universal vouchers, and the money for private schools comes from the same line-item in the state budget that pays for public schools. A dollar more for private school vouchers is a dollar less available to pay for public schools. This drain comes at a time when public schools are struggling across the state to pass local levies to pay for classrooms, transportation, renovations and new buildings to improve safety and learning conditions for their students.
This mad dash to snatch hundreds of millions of public tax dollars places a burden on local property owners and taxpayers and deprives our children of the high quality education they need and deserve.
School choice is a myth. The voucher program, once sold as a way to help poor families, is now a boon for wealthy families. The real power of choice is in the hands of the private school operators. More than 90 percent of the schools receiving public tax dollars at the expense of public schools and public school children are religious.
The private, religious schools are raking in voucher dollars and at the same time raising their tuition, in effect making it impossible for families with lesser means to have a choice. But financial discrimination is not the only form of inequity private school operators are using to determine who gets into their schools, and more importantly, who doesn’t.
Private school vouchers create a system of state-funded discrimination. Public schools are required to open their doors to all students regardless of race, sex, or financial status. Private schools use a series of litmus tests to determine who is accepted and who is rejected, including family finances, academic or athletic ability, disabilities, race, religion, and any other reason they want to apply. Why? Because there is also zero financial or academic accountability for the universal private school voucher scheme.
Our Kids are Counting on Us.
Things are only going to change if educators and families across the state stand up and say something. We are the ones our kids are counting on, there is no passing the buck on this one.
Our coalition is growing as more and more school districts join our fight to challenge the constitutionality of the harmful EdChoice voucher program that is siphoning funds from our public schools at alarming rates and allowing for discrimination in our kids’ educations. While charter and private schools enjoy subsidies from the state, public schools are struggling to provide quality education that Ohio’s constitution mandates.
We are building a broad coalition to bring our argument before the Ohio Supreme Court and rein in the out-of-control voucher program that’s hurting our kids, our schools, parents, educators, businesses, our communities and all of us.