The Kentucky Legislature will not enact a voucher bill this session!
Here is one reason why: Pastors for Kentucky Children stood strongly against the bill and in favor of public schools. Reverend Sharon Felton led the way in Kentucky. Please read her wonderful letter in support of public schools and the principle of separation of church and state.
She writes:
Pastors for Kentucky Children is a grassroots movement of pastors and lay people who want to support, encourage and advocate for our local public schools. Our teachers, administrators and staff are on the front lines when it comes to caring for our children and we are praying that you and your colleagues will give them all the resources they need to fulfill this calling. We implore state legislators to vote down scholarship tax credits, or any legislation that funnels money away from public schools. Public schools are our future, our public trust. Public schools educate and serve all students. Imagine what they could do if they were fully funded! If they had enough counselors, librarians, teachers, technology, and on and on! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stop collecting box tops to provide for our schools?
Our children deserve the highest-quality, free public education. They deserve to have the best faculty, facilities and future our state has to offer.
We are opposed to scholarship tax credits because they violate the separation of church and state. As clergy, we do not want government money or interference in our religious schools. There is not a church, temple, synagogue or mosque that wants government to fund our educational programs. Taxpayers, in turn, do not want their money going to pay for these religious education alternatives. Public money must stay with public schools. Private schools have flourished for decades without public money, they will continue to do so.
The group that started the Pastors for Children movement on behalf of public schools is Pastors for Texas Children, led by Charles Foster Johnson, which stopped vouchers in Texas one legislative session after another, and inspired similar groups in other states, where pastors don’t want to be dependent on government funding, knowing that where money flows, control eventually follows.
Here is another reason for the defeat of vouchers: Teachers walked out of their schools, rallied at the state capitol, and stopped the momentum towards vouchers.
Parents in SOS Kentucky and “Dear JCPS” spoke out against vouchers.
No vouchers in Kentucky this session. As public awareness builds in support of public schools that 90% of children attend, vouchers will stay dead.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Until the next session … when the Billionaire Bullies Club sends their vultures back to fly in circles over the state in search of a victim to tear apart even while the target is still alive.
The pastors and teachers must not let down their guard — not for one second. This is a long term fight that might last a few generations.
The Billionaire Bullies Club is terminal cancer in search of bodies to destroy.
That’s funny, Lloyd. Have you been to Frankfort? There are, literally, vultures circling this town during legislative sessions!
I haven’t been to Frankfort, Kentucky, but I think it is interesting (for want of a better word) that there are real vultures already circling. I wonder if the Koch brothers and/or the Walton family raised and trained them to show up when Kentucky’s legislative is in session as a reminder and threat to the elected state representatives so they will not forget who owns them.
You are CORRECT about the vultures coming back again and again and again.
#2 Definition of VULTURE: a contemptible person who preys on or exploits others.
Truest and most essential understanding for teachers and public school advocates across the nation: “This is a long term fight that might last a few generations.”
I don’t think this fight will last for generations.
The Disrupters are failing in everything they do.
They may take over a school, but then they fail to make a difference unless they push out the kids they don’t want.
They can’t point to a successful district.
Everything they touch has failed.
The uprising against their empty promises and lies is already underway.
At some point, the billionaires will bail out. That won’t be generations.
I hope you are right. I hope this fight to save the people’s public schools ends with the generation that declared this war on our public schools: Bill Gates generation. The oldest living generation of the Walton family, and the oldest living generation of the Koch family.
The massive wealth these families hold will still be there once they are consigned to the dust bins of history. What will the next generation of those autocratic and/or kleptocratic families do with that wealth and the power it buys?
My new book–out in January–says that these phony reformers have already been beaten and the only thing that keeps them going at this point is the money. They have had no success. Unless you count closing schools, firing teachers, demoralzing the profession, and privatizing public schools as a success.
Lloyd, I will prove it. You can’t lose every battle and declare victory. Unfortunately, traditional publishing moves slowly and the book won’t be out until January.
January 2020?
Would your publisher allow you to share the first 20-percent of the book through your blog?
Of course not. But when you read the book, I think you will say, I read that on the blog. What’s different, I think, is the synthesis as well as the thesis. The title (for now) is “Slaying Goliath.”
Good Title
I object to the negative view of vultures. All across the biological world, they clean up decaying flesh. Perhaps there is another reason they circle government run by reformers.
I agree, vultures (and other scavengers) are an important part of the eco-system.
In nature, vultures, birds, are part of the ecosystem, but human vultures are not.
Human vultures are monsters, criminals, and deserve every punishment that comes their way.
From a dictionary:
vul·ture
/ˈvəlCHər/Submit
noun
a large bird of prey with the head and neck more or less bare of feathers, feeding chiefly on carrion and reputed to gather with others in anticipation of the death of a sick or injured animal or person.
a contemptible person who preys on or exploits others.
“Donald Trump is a vulture”
I agree with Lloyd. Human vultures can even kill animal vultures for sure. They are monsters.
The jig is up, reform is dead. Reform is the college scandal in a nutshell, stratification of education by creating a system that can be gamed and cheated.
Good people that support justice and equity have to remain vigilant and active as the charter lobby is always on the hunt for a way into getting their mitts on public money. They are sneaky and relentless.
What a great letter. This reinforces the instinct I’ve always had that the last thing a bona fide religious school wants is taxpayer support, which inevitably brings with it (sooner or later) strings– govt rules & regulations that reflect the wider public good, which can impinge on & straiten curriculum tailored to a religious sect. Especially today! NCLB/ ESSA ELA-Math-testing reqts already put the squeeze on Soc Stud, Sci, World Lang & Phys Ed. How on earth do you find time for religious instruction?
Of course Evangelist schools manage this by re-writing history & science – and BDeVos underwrites this dumbing-down by pushing public vouchers for schools entirely unmonitored for ed results. States which adopt this approach [Indiana, Ohio, FL et al] will have to answer to taxpayers as their ed results slide into toilet. Catholic schools never subverted acad curriculum in that way… but they have diminished to a fraction of their former presence over the decades as Catholic ethnics assimilated; the few that remain jump on this bandwagon just to stay afloat…
This new development: Commissioner wants information about teachers, and their districts, in regards to “sick outs” when teachers attended the legislative session in the waning days. After what happened last session with the pensions, does anyone blame them? Apparently there are those that do, and I name no names.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article227823114.html
Charles,
You have posted here many times about your admiration for school choice. Since I have answered you many times, as have other readers, I won’t post any more of the duplicative comments. The destruction of public schools via “choice” of inferior schools is not inevitable. Last word.
I would like to add that black lives matter Louisville stood firmly with everyone involved and worked with educators and other organizations to facilitate and support this.