By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
School vouchers have been passed off as a way to help students escape failing public schools.
But a majority of the vouchers – using taxpayer money – are instead helping parents avoid paying tuition at private schools to escape from schools their children have never been enrolled in, according to the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding.
An “emergency meeting” of like-minded education leaders from this area of the state met Thursday evening at Bowling Green City Schools to discuss the threat to public education.
Bowling Green teacher Jeff Nichols, who is president of the district’s teachers union, explained that money for private school vouchers comes from the same pot of money intended for public schools.
“A dollar out for private schools is a dollar out of public schools,” Nichols said.
As more money is shifted to vouchers, public schools are forced to beg for more money from taxpayers, or make cuts to jobs, benefits, pensions, and school programs, he said.
Bowling Green Board of Education has joined more than 120 districts around the state in a lawsuit against the funding of vouchers with taxpayer money. Other districts were urged Thursday evening to do the same.
“We believe in the public school system because it’s open to all children,” Nichols said.
“We need to stand together. I need to know you’re with us – because this is not a drill,” he said.
Bowling Green Board of Education member Ginny Stewart, who serves on the steering committee of Vouchers Hurt Ohio, stressed the long-range damage expected from siphoning off money from public schools.
“We believe the expansion of vouchers will destroy the public education system,” she said.
In the last two years, the Bowling Green district has lost close to $500,000 in state funding that was shifted over to private schools, Stewart said.
“We need your help,” she said to other public school officials.
Private schools can turn away students with disabilities, behavioral issues, academic difficulties, or economic struggles. But public schools must take anyone, stressed Dan Heintz, member of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School Board.
“The discriminating private doors are open for a select few,” he said. “Public school doors are open to all.”
Speakers at the meeting stressed that they are not opposed to private schools – just against using public money to fund them.
“It’s not the responsibility of Ohio taxpayers to pay for private school tuition,” Heintz said.
Private schools aren’t accountable for how those tax dollars are spent, he added, unlike public schools which are scrutinized and must meet standards.
Plus the numbers just don’t add up. Under the voucher program, tax dollars pay private schools $7,500 for each high school student. Public schools, however, are paid just $1,100 from the state for each high school student. Recent changes allow parents homeschooling their children to get a $250 tax credit.
This year alone, state taxes to sectarian schools total $250 million.
It is predicted the next biennial budget will allow 25% of the state’s K-12 education budget to be allotted for private schools, to support about 10% of the state’s students. Meanwhile, 74% of the education budget will go to public schools with 90% of the state’s students.
Public education advocates know the lawsuit against vouchers faces strong and well-funded opposition. Groups like the Center for Christian Virtue are working hard to pass House Bill 290, called the Backpack Bill, which allows vouchers to private schools for all students regardless of family income.
The lawsuit, filed in January, contends that using public monies to pay for vouchers to private schools is unconstitutional. Leading the charge is Bill Phillis – a true believer in public education, who started his teaching career in 1958.
Vouchers were originally portrayed as a method to get students out of failing public schools.
But 95% of the children awarded vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. So rather than affording children an opportunity to escape poorly performing schools to attend private schools, the vouchers are acting as a refund for their parents while draining dollars from public schools, Willis said.
Since 2000, more than $25 billion in state funds have gone to vouchers and charter schools. The shift is bankrolled by some deep pockets aimed at the privatization of public education, he said.
But the lawsuit has the Ohio Constitution on its side, according to Heintz. Draining public funds for private schools is unconstitutional, he said, for the following five reasons:
- First, Ohio’s Constitution clearly states that public funds should be used to support “a single system of common schools.” Just as the state doesn’t pay for private swimming pools for people not wanting to use a public pool, it shouldn’t use public tax dollars for private schools, said Dennis Willard, from Vouchers Hurt Ohio.
- Second, the state is already failing to fully fund public schools, as ordered by the Fair School Funding Plan. Funneling those funds to private schools further shortchanges public schools. The framers of Ohio’s Constitution rejected putting tax dollars into private schools in 1851 and again in 1873-74. Vouchers and public school funds come out of the same funding pie – with all the growth in the budget during the last five years going to voucher programs. “They are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from already underfunded public schools,” Heintz said.
- Third, state funded vouchers make segregation worse in Ohio since private schools can reject students based on their race, religion or economics. Private schools can turn away students due to their disabilities, disciplinary records, or academics. Not so with public schools. “Common schools are there for all students,” Heintz said. “Private schools are allowed to discriminate. That is unfair, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
- Fourth, state founders ruled that no public funds be used for religious schools – and 90% of private schools in Ohio are parochial. “It’s in the Constitution, whether some lawmakers like it or not,” Heintz said. Draining of public school funds has led to many districts needing to pass levies to make up the difference. That has increased the reliance on property taxes, which the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled is unfair.
- And fifth, is the equal protection clause in the Ohio Constitution. “We need to close off the spigot of public school dollars to private schools,” Heintz said.
Willard said the voucher advocates try to soften the public perception by using the term “scholarship” rather than voucher. But the fact is that the program takes money from public education and gives it to parents trying to avoid tuition for private schools.
“Don’t do it with public school dollars,” Willard said. “Our public schools are the bedrock of our communities.”
This is not the first battle for school funding undertaken by the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, which litigated the DeRolph school funding case in 1997 and won in the Ohio Supreme Court.
That victory has been bittersweet, with the funding still lacking.
“Ohio’s legislature has failed two generations of Ohio public schools,” Heintz said.
It was decided to take the voucher battle to the courts rather than the state legislature because of all the political pressure nationwide to shift money to private schools.
Public education supporters fear that unless they win in the courts, the voucher funding will continue being endorsed “in the dark recesses of the statehouse.”
The “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” lawsuit was filed in Franklin County, and will ultimately be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court. Tennessee and Kentucky have already ruled that publicly funded vouchers are unconstitutional.
