Stalemate: Ohio’s Senate and House Reach Impasse on EdChoice Vouchers
According to what is logical, what is constitutional, and what is moral, you would think members of Ohio’s legislature could come together to resolve Ohio’s voucher crisis and provide some relief for school districts going broke because that same legislature (in the final hours of the budget conference committee last summer) surreptitiously and explosively expanded EdChoice Vouchers paid for out of local school districts’ budgets. But you would be wrong, because in the Ohio Senate, ideology trumps logic, constitutional protection of school funding, and basic morality.
Ohio’s EdChoice Voucher program has created a crisis for Ohio school districts. Here’s why:
- EdChoice Vouchers are awarded to students in so-called “failing” schools. The school ratings are based on what everyone—Republican and Democratic legislators alike—agrees are flawed algorithms in the state report card. Schools are rated in six categories, and if a school scores D or F for two years running in any one of the categories, it becomes an EdChoice Designated School, where students can qualify for a voucher paid for by a local school district budget deduction. The number of EdChoice Designated public schools increased from 255 last school year (2018-2019) to 517 this year (2019-2020), and that number is due to explode to over 1,200 schools for next school year (2020-2021). Two-thirds of all the state’s school districts will have at least one EdChoice Designated school next school year.
- Each EdChoice voucher is based on a school district deduction—$4,650 for K-8 students and $6,000 for each high school student. A student is counted as enrolled in the local school district, and the district receives state basic aid for that student, but for many districts, the voucher extracts more than the state’s basic aid per-pupil. And in an added twist this school year, the state froze basic formula aid for all public schools at last year’s amount. There is no extra money coming into the school district to pay for any additional vouchers this school year.
- While previously a student had to have been enrolled in a public school in order to carry a voucher out of that school, in the state budget bill, the Legislature changed that requirement. This year, any high school student living in the zone of a Designated EdChoice high school qualifies for a voucher even if that student has never attended a public school in the district.
All this means that during this 2019-2020 school year, thousands of students previously CONTINUE READING: Stalemate: Ohio’s Senate and House Reach Impasse on EdChoice Vouchers | janresseger