Maureen Reedy is a former Ohio Teacher of the Year and Upper Arlington City School District Teacher of the Year, retired after a 30-year career as a public-school teacher. She wrote this article for the Columbus Dispatch.
The “public” must be put back into public education in Ohio.
Instead of pushing current legislation like Senate Bill 11 that could take one billion dollars from public schools to fund private and religious school vouchers, Ohio’s lawmakers need uphold Ohio’s constitutional promise to keep public tax dollars out of private schools.
We Ohioans love our public schools.
Most of us attended neighborhood public schools, which continue to be the schools of choice for our children and grandchildren. Our public schools are community hubs that educate over 90% (1.7 million) of Ohio’s children; students come together from all backgrounds to learn and build understanding and acceptance of others.
Public education in Ohio is a 172-year-old promise, created on the constitutional belief that public schools are the fundamental foundation for the public good; a necessary tool to build an educated democracy and sustainable futures for our children in these challenging times.
Why then, are Ohio lawmakers churning out private school voucher legislation that takes hundreds of millions of public-school tax dollars per year from our neighborhood schools to pay for private and religious school education?
School vouchers violate the Ohio Constitution. That is why over 210 public school districts have filed the “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” lawsuit challenging EdChoice Vouchers for their unconstitutional use of state school funds for private school tuition.
Public dollars should not fund private and religious school tuition.
Ohio’s constitution has some of the strongest language in the country specifying that state funds are for public (common) schools only.
“The General Assembly … will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state,” Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution reads.
Just as Ohio’s founders intended, there is not one single word in the Ohio Constitution that allows the use of state dollars for private and religious school tuition.
Ohio’s first attempt at school vouchers began as a temporary pilot in 2006, and is now a refund and rebate school privatization program that reimburses families who never intended to send their children to public schools.
Runaway train must be stopped
Private school vouchers have ballooned out of control, initially taking away $42 million of public-school funding in 2008 and expanding to $350 million in 2022.
Senate Bill 11 has been introduced to make every child in Ohio eligible for a private EdChoice school voucher, which could immediately take a billion dollars out of the finite supply of state school funds for over 90% of Ohio’s children whose families choose public schools.
When we let vouchers siphon funds from our public schools, our kids do not have the resources they need to succeed, and that hurts us all. EdChoice Vouchers for private schools means more school levies and higher property taxes. State funding for private schools is not only unconstitutional, it is unsustainable for Ohio taxpayers.
This brings us full circle to the crucial choice for the future of public education in Ohio. Public schools open their doors to children of all ability levels; welcoming students from diverse religions, cultures and nationalities.
Overall, Ohio’s public schools continue to outperform private voucher schools.
Public schools mirror the rising challenges of society today. Teachers are not just teaching, but also taking care of rising numbers of children in crises with mental and physical health challenges, which prevent them from learning. Instead of divesting in public education, Ohio needs to re-invest in our public schools.
Let’s face it. The only way to stop this runaway school voucher train is through a lawsuit.
Thousands of Ohio citizens have tried to get legislators to put the brakes on EdChoice vouchers and fulfill their oath to the state’s constitution: state school funding is solely for Ohio’s public-school districts.
The majority of Ohio’s legislators continue to steer our children and families in the wrong direction.
Vouchers hurt Ohio. The numbers are growing.
The movement is strong.
Maureen Reedy is a founding member of Public Education Partners, the largest nonprofit, all-volunteer Public Education advocacy group in Ohio.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nobody should be allowed to “customize” their public tax dollars in the way that states are doing in education. It turns a common good into a personal one. Tax dollars should be used for common needs and purposes and open to all. The ultimate goal of such personalization is to defund the public schools that are needed to support an informed future electorate, and we are seeing this anti-democratic strategy at play in GOP led states.
As Richard Rothstein convincingly documented in The Color of Money, and as all legitimate histories of the era of enslaving Blacks, Jim Crow, and the backlash to Brown, and even as taxation policy since 1980, customization of American tax law is the rule, not the exception.
RT,
The oligarchs want to turn education funding into a consumer decision. Most people don’t want to pay for someone else’s children to attend a religious school. Bond issues will fail as the public goes consumer. “Why should I pay for your private choice? Do it in your own dime!”
Why should taxpayers be forced to pay for other people’s choice, particularly if they do not support religious or even charter schools? Private interests are hijacking public dollars without any accountability. All the public gets out of it is the bill while their public schools lose quality and value.
I’ll try to keep my pessimism about Ohio as limited as possible. When Reedy writes, “The only way to stop this runaway school voucher train is through a lawsuit.”, I do not disagree. I have taken my local school board for being too cynical and cowardly to join in the suit. But the problem here is a great example of the macro problem we have nationally. Since the opposition is making institutions corrupt to benefit their agenda and they are winning fundamental battles over representation and legislating against a majority of its citizens, the stakes are higher than ever. Those of us who pay attention in Ohio know about the saga of former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Reedy. She was ousted (we elect ’em here, supposedly) and replaced by an ideologue. We generally know the fate this lawsuit if it ever gets that far. The decision was written long ago, it just needs to be edited for the current times.
If the strategy of the other side is to corrupt all mechanisms of governing while maintain the structure of legitimate institutions, even when their rulings are objectively illegitimate to US constitutional principles. What do we do when we invest a faith of legitimacy in what we know to be legitimate institutions that are being hijacked by illegitimate persons in those offices? That’s where we are in Ohio, that’s where we are hurdling as a nation.
Ugh…
The strategy of the other side is to corrupt all mechanisms of governing while maintaining the structure of legitimate institutions.
Lawsuits have limited impact on policy. In North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee et al, governors and legislators have often ignored court mandates with little push back. In Brown V. Board many southern states refused compliance until the federal government stepped in until DOJ basically backed off of enforcement losing many efforts to stem declarations of “unified districts” by local and regional courts. the only way to defeat the privatization movement is politically. Convince voters that the Republicans have no regard for public school students, only for the mammon that fills their coffers. The challenge now is that there are enough Democrats who swim among the corporate sharks that any momentum to support public schools is difficult. The general public has to understand that vouchers are another attempt to subsidize wealth. While the media carps on “wokeness” and CRT, from both of the arguments, there are few public forums that reach into the media sphere telling the truth. Courts can be useful, but they will not turn the argument.
Paul,
You hit the nail on its head.
The corporate Dems are a bigger problem than the knuckle-dragging illiterati.
If significant Democratic leaders (looking at Cory Booker, Michael Bennett, the Center for American Progress, Arne Duncan) support privatization, they divide the opposition to the destruction of public schools.
Many of my recent comments have been placed in moderation never to be seen again.
They’ll come back when Diane sees them. It’s a very random, process and they will be seen.
Yes.
Most parents grew up in the public-school systems. They do not wish them to be destroyed. They want an open dialog regarding what is being taught in the schools. Since they are generally not being listened to, they are voting with their feet and going to home schooling, charters, religious or on line venues. They pay taxes and support these alternatives schools as well. These parents are heavily involved in their children’s education and should be heard. I love public schools but there are problems. Listening to the parents more is a beginning.
Have you convinced yourself that you are currently and always have lived in an Ozzie and Harriett episode?
Have we met?
Across the nation, 85-90% of children are enrolled in public schools. Their parents have not fled anywhere. They know and trust their teachers. The public has never voted to support vouchers. Ever.
Ohio has schools that teach creationism instead of science — and history. Harrison Christian School, in Harrison, Ohio, said, “We believe all things in the universe were created by God in six literal days of the creation week (Genesis 1:1-2:3, Exodus 20:8-11) and that the biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is fully historical.”
NJ also had that “thorough and efficient” phrase regarding education that M. Reedy notes is in Ohio’s state constitution. I’ve sometimes pondered what really constitutes a thorough And efficient education. Can a state actually do both at the same time?
Best of luck to the 210 districts challenging the voucher effort.
Yes. And we do have to consider that some on the political right–or religious right–want to weaken or destroy public education. They refer to public schools as “government” schools, and they’re right. They see them as socialistic, and they’re right. They see them and their unionized teachers as threatening their capitalism and religious conservatism, and they are right. They see their teacher and public employee unions as a threat to their dominance–and they are right. Public schools are also a huge drain on private resources which, in the eyes of Friedman conservatives, might be available for profitable investment. In Ohio, also, Republican legislators are moving to make strikes by university teachers illegal. (I’ll be commenting on that in the Chillicothe Gazette & online).