Jan Resegger summarizes the disastrous Ohio plan to expand vouchers and how grossly unfair it is to public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of the children in the state. As she points out, most of the children drawing money away from her district never attended public schools, yet now their tuition will be extracted from the budget of the public schools. Read her post in its entirety.
She writes:
On Tuesday afternoon, I went to a meeting of my monthly book discussion group—all of us retired and over 70. But as we sat down with our coffee and before we discussed the book we had all been reading for the month, we found ourselves distracted by the topic that is tearing our community apart: the changes the Ohio Legislature made last summer in the fine print of the FY 20-21 state budget—changes that exploded the size of the state’s EdChoice school voucher program.
I wonder whether legislators have any real understanding of the collateral damage for particular communities from policies enacted without debate. Maybe, because our community has worked for fifty years to be a stable, racially and economically diverse community with emphasis on fair housing enforcement and integrated schools, legislators just write us off as another failed urban school district. After all, Ohio’s education policy emphasizes state takeover and privatization instead of equitable school funding. The state punishes instead of helping all but its most affluent, outer ring, exurban, “A”-rated school districts, where property values are high enough that state funding is not a worry.
What this year’s EdChoice voucher expansion means for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district where the members of my book discussion group all live is that—just to pay for the new vouchers—our school district has been forced to put a property tax levy on the March 17 primary election ballot. Ohio’s school finance expert, Howard Fleeter explains that in our school district, EdChoice voucher use has grown by 478 percent in a single year. Fleeter continues: “Cleveland Heights isn’t losing any students…. They are just losing money.’” “If this doesn’t get unwound, I think it is significant enough in terms of the impact on the money schools get to undermine any new funding formula.”
Ohio deducts the price of the vouchers students carry to private and religious schools from the local school district budget even though, in the case of Cleveland Heights-University Heights this year, 94 percent of those students have never attended the public schools in our district. The state counts the voucher students who live in our community as though they are enrolled in our school district and then deducts the voucher from the local school budget, but the cost of each voucher is more than the state allocates per pupil. In fact, in the current Ohio biennial FY20-21 state budget, state public education basic aid funding is frozen, which means our district actually gets no new state funding for each voucher student, but one hundred percent the cost of each voucher is deducted anyway.
Why are the people in my book group so upset about the voucher explosion and another levy on the ballot in March? We are not a bunch of old ladies grousing about the burden of our taxes. Two of us co-chaired a successful school levy campaign back in 1993; one person served on the board of education; and the rest were teachers in our school district. As we read the conversation threads on Next Door, where people are accusing our district of mismanaging funds, or paying teachers too much, or hiring too many school psychologists, we worry about all the undocumented misinformation floating around. Members of our group are anxious about our grandchildren and our neighbors’ children who depend on the public schools we have spent our lives supporting and protecting. But it is difficult to explain what happened in the budget, our plight this winter set in motion last June and July in the budget conference committee, when amendments were added to the state budget without debate. It was done so quietly at the time that people across the state only began to grasp the impact later in August when the Ohio Association of School Business Officials alerted school treasurers about the potential impact.
Fortunately the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District sponsored a special public meeting on January 9, 2020, to explain the changes in the EdChoice Voucher Program and begin quelling the anxiety that is tearing our community apart. The school district has posted the powerpoint presentation from the meeting, and at the meeting, the school district distributed a clear, factual brochure about the legislature’s changes in the EdChoice Vouchers. The brochure explains: “(T)he program was expanded to the point of unsustainability. Ohio had fewer than 300 buildings deemed eligible for vouchers in 2018-2019; that number has exploded to 1,200 for 2020-2021. When the Ohio General Assembly passed its biennial budget in July 2019, it froze receipts at 2018-2019 levels. This means that for every new voucher used, none of the cost would be offset by state aid. Legislators also removed the provision that required students to attend a public school prior to using the voucher. Unable to prepare financially for the change, the District was forced the following month to negotiate one-year contracts with the teachers union, as opposed to multi-year contracts. In CH-UH, approximately 1,400 students, 94% of whom have never attended our K-12 public schools, are taking scholarships to attend private schools. This has amounted to an actual loss of $4.2 million for us last fiscal year and an estimated loss of $6.8 million this fiscal year.” Each time a student secures an EdChoice Voucher, that student can keep the voucher, paid for by the school district deduction, every year until the student graduates from high school.
The school district’s information handout continues: “The CH-UH City School District will ask the community for a new 7.9 mill operating levy in March. The current funding issues with EdChoice are the major reason for this millage. In fact, the District would not need to ask for a levy until 2023 if it weren’t for the way EdChoice was funded, and the millage would be significantly less.”
School districts across Ohio are demanding that the Legislature do something about what has become a crisis for many school districts. It is important that the Legislature act quickly, before the February EdChoice Voucher enrollment period for next school year. The Heights Coalition for Public Education, a community organization, has prepared a list of short-term voucher fixes which the Legislature should consider:
- “Remove budget language from House Bill 166 (the current state budget) expanding vouchers in grades 7-8 and for high schools. Restore voucher language to pre-budget language.”
- Limit state report card ratings on which EdChoice schools are designated to 2017-18 and 2018-19. Currently districts are held accountable all the way back to 2013-14, and considerable changes in school programming have occurred in the seven ensuing years.
- “Restore funding for school districts that have lost funds to voucher students who were not part of their 2019 Average Daily Enrollment.”
- “Cut the loss of funds for high poverty (50% economically disadvantage) districts at 5% and other school districts at 10%.”
- Adopt the funding methodology for EdChoice Expansion (another Ohio voucher program) which awards vouchers to needy students and pays for the vouchers fully with state funds (not the school district deduction).
State Senator Matt Huffman has long been among the Ohio Legislature’s strongest proponents of school vouchers. Earlier this week, the Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell reported that Senator Huffman himself supports the fifth voucher fix listed above: “State Sen. Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, wants a bigger change. He is resurrecting his 2017 proposal to offer vouchers to any family in Ohio whose income falls under certain limits… His proposal would have the state, not districts, pay for the vouchers of $4,650 for grades K-8 and the $6,000 a year for high school. That would eliminate many district complaints that voucher costs are killing their budgets. He said the state can control costs by limiting how many students can use vouchers in a given year. Some extra money is already available in the budget, he said. ‘That seems to be the only way, really, to do this in a fair way,’ he added.”
There is reason for caution here, even though Huffman’s assessment is correct that eliminating the school district deduction method for funding vouchers is the only fair way to address what has become an urgent crisis for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools and for many other Ohio school districts. We all remember Naomi Klein’s 2007 warningabout the danger of adopting “shock doctrine,” privatization policies in a hurry in the midst of a crisis. We need to be sure that any so-called fix isn’t just an opportunity for the Legislature to grow the state’s voucher programs in some other way. After all, in the case of Ohio’s current voucher mess, the Ohio Legislature itself created the crisis by expanding school privatization with explosive growth in the EdChoice school district deduction.
This blog has emphatically and consistently opposed private school tuition vouchers paid for with public funds, because vouchers undermine public funding for public education. Education privatization is never in the public interest.
However, currently in Ohio, an existential crisis for local school districts demands an immediate solution. The Legislature has saddled school districts with a school privatization program whose size the Legislature has no incentive to control because the money quietly washes out of local school district budgets. Neither can school districts control what is happening to their local budgets when the Legislature has set up an uncontrollable flow of dollars into the vouchers.
Huffman’s proposed solution would not solve the bigger problem of Ohio school vouchers. On the other hand, Huffman’s plan would pay for the vouchers out of the state budget, and as he points out, if it were to be so inclined, the Legislature could control costs by limiting how many students can use vouchers in a given year. Huffman’s idea would address the immediate school district financial crisis. It would then be up to all of us to pressure the Legislature to control the size and number of Ohio school vouchers awarded each year. Perhaps we can motivate a future legislature to eliminate vouchers entirely and return to a system where public dollars serve the mass of our children in the public schools.
Father Jan Schmidt, director of Pastoral Services at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains in Cincinnati, and Director of the Department of Pastoral Life and Evangelization at the Central Offices of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati published an oped in the Cincinnati Enquirer today claiming that public funds should be used to pay for Catholic schools.
There was nothing exceptional about the claims. He pointed to the Blaine amendments as anti-Catholic laws foisted on states “by Protestant legislators.”
He is no doubt supported by many people in our area where there are three Catholic universities and beliefs that sustain enrollments in four sex-segregated Catholic high schools, three for boys, three for girls in addition to two others.
Father Schmidt did not dwell on the EdChoice scheme that would allow state-approved private schools in Cincinnati to receive $6000 for students in grades 9-12 and $4650 for students grades K–8. He did not inform readers that tuition in these high schools ranges from $9150 to $14, 425 (not counting special fees).
He also did not concern himself with broader issues of church and state, the fact that Catholic schools can choose their students and do not have obligations to comply with public laws bearing on exceptional children and student privacy.
Advocates for EdChoice vouchers, along with Father Jan Schmidt and other advocates for tax-supported Catholic education ignore the many of the issues that our local press is unwilling to address.
I am happy to see that Jan’s informed and persistent work in Cleveland is given attention on this blog.
PERSISTENT is exactly right 🙂
Shame on my state!
When the going gets tough, the right shouts “States Rights”
When they’ve got the separation of powers trifecta (control of all three branches), they go for Federal Regulations they claim to hate.
(When they have the trifecta and the media control (fox) they’ll go for Amendments).
Blaine is the perfect example (well, there are better ones). Expect to see more federal oversight and regulations to take control from the Blaine states. Next stop; Constitution. (Not a conspiracy theory – it’s feasible).
Anyway – the Ohio options – fixing the current problem doesn’t fix the fundamental principled problem.
Suburban schools, particularly, have always worried (not really), What if all the kids in private and parochial schools enrolled in the public schools? Not enough buildings, staff, etc. And, local taxes not tied to enrollment would not be enough to support the budgets; however, state money would have to increase. So, they have laid low on restrictions that could affect enrollment in those schools. Huffman’s proposal does this on paper, similar to what it appears the law used to require (having attended a public school first).
So Huffman’s proposal is essentially “enroll all the kids in public school so the school district can claim State funds for them; withdraw the kids to privates and parochial so only the new money follows the kids.
But – address the fact that this law is denying children of rights they once had – which was once their choice – but now it’s publicly funded.
Or at least go with the “if this is good for kids, it’s ok” argument – and press the GOP / right there are obligations using State funding – public funding. If the State has regulations to protect and do what’s “good for kids” in public school – then any recipient of State funds must comply, too.
No exclusions in enrollment (including the “wink, wink – your kid with disabilities or minimal English language won’t make it here” variety)
Cannot contribute to or become de facto segregation
Must comply with state AND federal requirements for Special Education and Civil Rights / OCR complaints (although most of those are stripped);
Must comply with ESSA including state requirements for testing (I can’t believe I just typed that) and reporting;
No discrimination in personnel and enrollment based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation (well, except in my state where that is not protected);
No arbitrary exclusions / expulsions with due process and hearing (a.k.a. kicking out kids after they receive state funding for them);
Heath and safety and more.