Laura Chapman reports on budget cuts to schools in Ohio, which hurt public schools but protect charters and vouchers.
She writes:
Bad news from Ohio again. Not quite Lord of the Flies (fiction or non-fiction truth)
This week, Governor DeWine is proposing $355 million in K-12 education cuts with $300 million coming out of foundation aid to local school districts from the current state budget that expires in July.
While public education accounts for about 42% of state expenditures, it will absorb about 45.8% of the loss.
He has not asked private schools that take public funds to sacrifice anything. This proposed cut will exacerbate the underfunding of public schools in favor of EdChoice vouchers that raid public school dollars for private schools.
In addition public school funds should not be supporting charter schools that are the pet project of billionaires who think they are entitled to raid public dollars for their preferred undemocratic system of education.
This proposed cut will shift a large portion of public school funding from the state to local districts. I have not looked at all of DeWine’s proposed budget cuts but these sure look like they are designed to hit public schools and favor private schools as well as charters schools that have declared they are eligible for small business loans, these likely to be foregiven.
If you are in Ohio, please open the link below and follow-up with emails to the people who are planning for this cut to be passed well before school starts. Start with this link:
https://mailchi.mp/ac594ace4a33/action-alert-355-million-in-education-cuts-in-ohio?e=ba8653e702
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Public school families and supporters can see how much they’re cutting from each public school student in every district here:
Click to access K-12_Education.pdf
The governor said he cut funding to public school students reluctantly, but it sure doesn’t look like that- it looks like they chose to cut public schools first, probably counting on no one advocating on behalf of those students.
Let’s prove them wrong. If we don’t speak up public school students will once again bear the brunt of a crisis, just as they did in 2009. For some of these students it will be the second time in their K-12 progression they have been sacrificed to balance a budget.
Politicians assume no one will stick up for them.
Why were public schools singled out for cuts? No clout down there in Columbus?
Chiara. Thanks for the spreadsheet. You are as savvy as anyone on the dismal state of affairs in Ohio. The public schools have been thrown to the winds by a state legislature, and now a Governor, intent on defunding them in multiple ways while also thinking that opening schools will help save the economy. DeWine is positioning himself as a “rational” Republican, like Cuomo, but then doing in that reputation the same way Cuomo is, with bizarre policies that treat out students and teachers and public schools as unworthy of support. Then there are the billionaires who are funding efforts to capture more and more students for their X-prize competitions and amateur hour ventures from entrepreneurs. I do not know how many Ohio charter schools have decided they are not really public institutions, but that is another scam that is available for double dipping into public funds for privately operated schools.
All true. All disgusting. But DeWine knows he’ll pay no political price for his education policies. No one in Ohio ever has. They all get promoted and more entrenched. It’s an easy call, not just in Ohio, not just in New York, but in every state in the nation. Unless and until politicians pay a political price for their views on selling out education, they never will. I have praised DeWine’s general approach to the pandemic, but I tell my friends that I would never vote for him because of his views on education and his fealty to the Ohio Republican establishment. Same with Cuomo, same with Gates. Not one understands or agrees with my views. If anything, they think I’m nuts.