Jan Resseger writes today about Matt Huffman, Speaker of the House in Ohio and his determination to undermine the funding of the state’s public schools. If you read the previous post about the voucher movement in Ohio, you will recall that Huffman led the battle to enact vouchers for all families, including affluent families.
He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools, and he has long been determined to get public funds to subsidize religious school tuition.
After the state was ordered to enact a plan to fund its schools fairly, relying less on property taxes, the legislature enacted the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan in 2021, which was supposed to be phased in over six years. Huffman recently declared that the plan was “unsustainable.”
Ohio has 1.75 million students in public schools. There are 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.
Using public dollars to pay the tuition of rich students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools is “sustainable” for the religious zealots in the legislature.
Ohio’s commitment to fair funding for public schools has been undermined by two Republican priorities:
- The universal voucher program now costs $1 billion a year.
- Republicans are determined to cut taxes and to reduce funding for public schools.
Those are Matt Huffman’s priorities, not adequate and fair funding for public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools. . . .”
My condolences to him, poor sucker.
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Hahahahahaha! Perfect. Thanks Duane.
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Indeed. Matt Huffman, schooled by a religion that has given cover to pedophiles and misogynists for millennia. No wonder he is warped.
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One can overcome that indoctrination, I am proof. Yeah, it’s only anecdotal, but I know many who were subjected to that crap who have overcome and rejected it.
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perhaps it was because I live in a very Protestant place, but I went to college with a whole generation of people who had rejected Catholicism precisely because of going to Catholic schools.
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I love how all of these righties claim to love & respect the Constitution, but are willing to blow it up in order to exert their own agenda. Our great country was founded on the idea that every citizen should have the right to a free PUBLIC education, without favoring any particular religion. This concept has allowed the so-called American Dream to be achieved over the 200+ years of our country’s existence, where anyone, no matter how low their origins were, could rise up to achieve a successful life due to an education. Nowadays, Right wingers, mostly religious oriented, want to favor & fund religious schools at the expense of our Public School System. They actually want to have Christian concepts taught in our Public schools, which would make our Founding Fathers heads explode. Sorry, but No Thanks–worship your religion all you want, just keep it out of our PUBLIC institutions, especially our Public Schools.
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These extremists claim they support education freedom. What about the rights of other children to receive an adequately publicly funded education free from any religious influence. Nothing is wrong with freedom. However, if you choose a private school, you should have to pay for it with your private dollars.
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👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
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The costs to society of privatizing public education will be many times greater than the costs, which are inadequate as it is, of providing a free and appropriate education for all.
But the good part for the xtian theocrats is that they won’t have to pay to have the* children brainwashed into their millennia old Middle Eastern desert tribal mythologies. Lots easier to manipulate them.
*I didn’t say their because the xtian theocrats will demand that all children be converted and beguiled into accepting and believing the theocrats xtian fantasies. Which particular form of xtianity is a whole other question, one, which historically, has resulted in many being put to death for not having the “proper” beliefs.
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