Latest News

Suburbs, the Final Private School Voucher Frontier

July 9, 2024

Good Tuesday morning,

The pro-private school voucher crowd is on a mission, to explore new worlds of gobbling up hundreds of millions of tax dollars and to boldly go where no voucher program has gone before.

And so a program once falsely sold as a way to help poor families escape urban schools is now largely a flat-out big money grab for greedy private school operators and a refund and a rebate scam for wealthy families who never had any intention of enrolling their children in public schools.

Want proof?

The most explosive growth in private school vouchers after extreme anti-public school lawmakers made Ohio a universal voucher state is in the state’s wealthy suburban districts.

Look at this chart that accompanied a story recently by WKSU radio and Ideastream.

*This chart is based on EdChoice Expansion data from the Ohio Department of Education for school years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. Voucher funding for the year 2023-2024 has not yet been finalized by the ODE.

From the news report: “In Northeast Ohio, that’s manifested in large infusions of cash for private schools in and near school districts like Rocky River, Chardon and Twinsburg, but hasn’t necessarily resulted in a drop in student enrollment in those districts, according to an Ideastream analysis of Ohio Department of Education data from late June.”

The number of vouchers given out in the 2023-24 school year doubled to 130,000. The number of students enrolled in public schools dropped by about 5,000 and enrollment in non-public schools increased by about 3,000, according to Ideastream’s analysis.

Do we need any more proof that the state is now in the business of funneling hundreds of millions of dollars a year to private, primarily religious, schools?

We’re fighting back by challenging the constitutionality of the private school voucher program in the court of law, and vouchers go on trial in Franklin County on Monday, November 4.

Is your district part of our lawsuit? Check here.

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

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio