EdChoice Voucher Expansion in Ohio Creates a New Kind of School Funding Inequity | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Expansion in Ohio Creates a New Kind of School Funding Inequity | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Expansion in Ohio Creates a New Kind of School Funding Inequity

Steve Dyer’s new Innovation Ohio report on Ohio’s FY 2020-20121 state budget begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB 166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.” He continues: “This is just the latest in a series of expansions of vouchers in Ohio law. The state has been on the front lines of the private school voucher fight for two decades.”

One of the ways vouchers were expanded in this budget is that, while in the past, all students except those entering Kindergarten must have been enrolled during the previous school year in the public school district from which the student seeks to carry away a voucher to a private or religious school, the new budget bill erodes this protection for public schools. The Ohio Association of School Business Officials (OASBO) explains: “Generally, students wishing to claim a voucher under the original EdChoice voucher program must have attended a public school in the previous school year. However, HB 166 codifies in law… (that) students going into grades 9-12 need not first attend a public school. In other words, high school students already attending a private school can obtain a voucher.” This change in state law means that Ohio’s public school districts will now be subsidizing the education of many students, primarily those in religious schools, who have never intended to use the public schools.

But the implications of the new state budget voucher expansion are not merely because a new group of students will be awarded vouchers. A new white paper ( Executive Summary or Full Report), released this month by the Heights Coalition for Public Education and written by the Ohio Federation of Teachers’ Darold Johnson and the Heights Coalition’s Susan Kaeser and Ari CONTINUE READING: EdChoice Voucher Expansion in Ohio Creates a New Kind of School Funding Inequity | janresseger