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Montana: School Choice Doesn’t Make Sense Here

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2020 //
14

Sarah Vowell is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times where this article appeared. Proponents of vouchers often claim that the state prohibitions on public funding of religious schools were birthed in anti-Catholic bigotry, based on the Blaine Amendment, which was offered as a Constitutional amendment after the Civil War but failed to be adopted. Many states wrote their own “baby Blaine” amendments to assure that no public money went to religious schools–not just Catholic schools, but religious schools of any kind. The case now before the Supreme Court, Espinoza v. Montana, asserts the claim that refusal to fund religious schools is bigotry towards those schools. Sarah Vowell explains that the Montana constitution was rewritten in 1972. It included a strict prohibition against funding religious schools because the people of Montana can barely afford to pay for the public schools they have. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Espinoza, it will impoverish the public schools of Montana. That is why the suit is supported by the far-right Institute for Justice and their funders such as the Walton and DeVos families.

 

Scrutinizing the avuncular sphinx Chief Justice John Roberts throughout the impeachment trial of President Trump, I kept wondering whether he will preserve or ransack the legacy of the framers we revere — framers like the Republican Betty Babcock and the Democrat Dorothy Eck. It’s the question on all Americans’ minds: Do Mr. Roberts and his eight co-workers fully appreciate the public-spirited grandeur of the winter of 1971-72, when 100 Montanans, including housewives, ministers, a veterinarian and a beekeeper, gathered at the state capital, Helena, for the constitutional convention, affectionately nicknamed the “Con Con”?

The question haunts the current Supreme Court case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. This newspaper has called the dispute over whether state tax credits can apply to donations for scholarships to private religious schools “a proxy battle over school choice.” However, the back story is so clumsily specific to Montana’s small population and immense geography that the case doesn’t entirely translate to states where people outnumber cows.

The novelist Ivan Doig wrote that in the scruffy Montana of yore, “when you met up with someone apt to give you trouble from his knuckles, the automatic evaluation was ‘too much Butte in him.’” When, as the grateful graduate of a Montana public school, I was determining whether I had a duty to stick up for the Con Con framers regarding the Espinoza case, I spotted a sequence in the web address of an article about it in The Atlantic that read “montana-bigoted-laws.” At that moment this Bozeman girl had too much Butte in her. Dorothy Eck wrote no “bigoted” anti-Christian laws — she was a blatant Methodist!

Before it ended up at the Supreme Court, the Espinoza ruckus started with a $150 tax credit. Montanans will make an appellate-level stink about chump change because that’s the only available change. The tiny tax base is basically eight coal miners, a couple of ski lift operators, that family in Belgrade making organic goat cheese and Huey Lewis.

Kendra Espinoza counted on scholarships to help pay for her daughters’ tuition at Stillwater Christian, a private school in Kalispell. No wonder. At up to $8,620 per year, ninth grade is more than $1,000 higher than undergraduate tuition at the University of Montana. What we called a “band room” at Bozeman High, Stillwater considers a “conservatory.”

School choice partisans pounced when Ms. Espinoza and other private-school parents sued to overturn the State Supreme Court’s ruling that the tax credit for scholarship donations violated the “no-aid” clause for sectarian schools in the Montana Constitution. They argued that it was time to erase “antiquated” anti-Catholic laws against public funding for private religious education. The subtle former state senator Matthew Monforton denounced the law as “Jim Crow for Christians.”

It is worth pointing out that the eighth word of the ’72 Constitutionis “God.” In the first draft of the preamble, some wistful Jeffersonians tried to thank the “Spirit of the Creator” for “the quiet beauty of our state.” They were shot down in the Bill of Rights Committee because “not mentioning ‘God’ specifically would be unacceptable” and so they “voted unanimously to retain Him in the Preamble.” The framers included a priest from Great Falls, Mitt Romney’s cousin Miles, the self-proclaimed “first Roman Catholic ever elected to anything in Yellowstone County,” and enough Presbyterians to warrant their own photo op.

While the ’72 Constitution’s no-aid clause looks similar to its predecessor in the 1889 original, the update was motivated by fortifying public schools, not shunning people of faith. Rethinking education was, along with open government and the right to individual dignity, part of the Con Con’s crusade to take a stand that no one dared dream of at statehood: that Montana would be a state in a republic and not an exceedingly wide company town.

“We were known as the state that wore the copper collar, controlled by the Anaconda Company,” Ms. Eck once said. A swashbuckler for the League of Women Voters, she referred to the copper company lording over the “richest hill on earth” and thus the newspapers and politicians. “There were stories of how their lobbyists would sit in the balcony at the legislature and do thumbs up and thumbs down of how people should vote.”

The Con Con delegates, who arranged themselves not by party but alphabetically, were so preoccupied with the public interest that they agreed public funds could be spent only on public agencies. During deliberations on the no-aid clause, the pastor of Helena’s Plymouth Congregational led the charge of “preserving our public school system,” preaching, “that’s what this issue is all about. I don’t think we ought to dilute that in any way.” (Diluting that is the aim of Espinoza.)

Article X, Section 1, of the ’72 Constitution proclaims that it is the duty of the state to “develop the full educational potential of each person.” That is an expensive ideal in a desolate wasteland. Public schools are supposed to be a volume business, but tell that to the Great Plains. The state of Montana has about 60,000 fewer inhabitants than the number of students enrolled in New York City’s public school system. I have volunteered in that epic system, which is to say I have had to excuse myself from a struggling student to go cry in a bathroom, so I sympathize with an urban kid who might eye a parochial school as her best chance.

That school choice logic doesn’t apply to Montana, where the poorest schools often have the smallest class sizes. The Montana Free Press reported that out in Prairie County, “Terry High School’s sophomore class has just five students this school year.” Starting in first grade, my friend Genevieve would ride her horse Croppy to the Malmborg School near Bozeman Pass; one year she and her brother Pete were half the student body.

When USA Today asked Ms. Espinoza if she had any qualms about what her case could mean for public schools, she insisted, “They have plenty of money.”

How I wish that were true. Last year, the public school district in Kalispell announced $1.7 million in budget cuts, Great Falls recently lost almost a hundred teachers, and Billings just announced about $4 million in cuts that mean canceling fifth grade orchestra and band.

A Supreme Court decision on Espinoza is expected in June. If the justices rule against Montana’s voters, tax credits for private school scholarship donations could surge. Revenue that might revive the Billings fifth grade band program could underwrite the fifth grade band at a pricey Kalispell private school.

Kalispell is the seat of Flathead County, which between 2000 and 2015 added more than 15,000 jobs just as rural Choteau County was losing more than 300. Overturning the no-aid clause will shovel more money into the cities (where most of the private schools are) and kick Choteau while it’s down, thereby thwarting the framers’ plan to spare needy districts from taxing “their residents three or four times as much as rich districts to provide less than half as much money per student.”

The public schools the framers conjured ask the taxpayers to splurge on fairness, not privilege, to pull together, not away. That beekeeper, those clergymen and moms chartered a state in a republic where a first grader on horseback is supposed to be as big and important as the mountains. As the Supreme Court justices ponder whether to upend all that over what appears to be a $150 trifle, I’ll pass along this lesson of Montana winters: A collapsed roof starts with a single snowflake.

Sarah Vowell, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of “The Wordy Shipmates” and “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Montana, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Trump and DeVos Abandon Charter Schools for Hot-Looking Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2020 //
7

Peter Greene nails it here, in discussing how Trump and DeVos folded the federal Charter Schools Program into a big, fat block grant that states can spend however they wish. 

For decades, Republicans have been wanting to eliminate social programs by turning them into block grants to the states. Now, as Valerie Strauss reported, charter school advocates are outraged. Brought to the dance and abandoned.

Open the link and see the great image Greene posts to make the point.

I have known for many years that right-wingers went for charters only because they lay the groundwork for vouchers.

I learned that when I worked in rightwing think tanks like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Koret Education Program at the Hoover Institution.

The true right-wingers don’t give a hoot about charter schools except as a way to condition the American public to give up on public schools and place their faith in consumerism.

Charters pave the way for vouchers. They turn citizens, invested in public institutions, into consumers, looking out only for their own child.

Now that the Trump administration has a chance to show what it really cares about, it is vouchers (aka “Education Freedom Scholarships” or some other deceptive name).

DeVos wants every American child in a religious school or some other private school.

Not the kind that costs $25,000-50,000 a year.

The kind that costs $4,800 a year.

The kind that scoffs at the common good.

The kind that employs high-school dropouts as teachers (as in Florida), the kind that decides which children are acceptable and which are not allowed. The kind that kicks out students, staff and families who are gay, knowing that Trump’s rightwing Supreme Court will back them up.

The kind that accepts only “our kind.”

The Trump-DeVos show and the return of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia as acceptable public policy.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Racism, Religion, Vouchers

Orlando Sentinel: Should Publicly-Funded Voucher Schools Be Allowed to Discriminate?

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2020 //
13

The Orlando Sentinel surveyed Florida’s voucher schools and found that nearly 160 of them openly discriminate against LGBT students, families, and staff. Democratic legislators object and have been meeting with the head of the state’s Step Up for Students, which transfers hundreds of millions of dollars (that would otherwise go to the state as taxes ) to voucher schools. Some major corporations have said they would no longer contribute to the program (in lieu of taxes), which undoubtedly encourages Step Up to talk.

Republican legislators indicate that anti-LGBT policies are not a problem for them.

Such bias is certainly not a problem for Betsy DeVos, whose family foundation has supported anti-gay causes for many years.

And it’s probably okay with the Supreme Court, which ruled that discrimination against a gay couple was acceptable if based on a sincere religious conviction. As you will see if you open the story, these evangelical schools sincerely and passionately detest gay people.

Which other groups is it okay to hate while funded by public dollars?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Education Reform, Florida, Religion, Vouchers

National Education Policy Center: The Dangerous Case of Espinoza v. Montana, Now Before the US Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2020 //
31

The future of public education hangs in the balance. The US Supreme Court has shifted far to the right, with the addition of religious zealots Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The case, Espinoza v. Montana, would permit them to eliminate the line of separations between church and state, abolishing every state constitutional provision that bars public funding of religious schools. The Court has already ruled that religious “freedom” makes it permissible for a place of business to refuse service to someone based on their sexual orientation, if that refusal is based on sincere religious beliefs. Will we one day learn that racial discrimination is permissible so long as it is based on sincere religious beliefs? The possibilities for destroying basic principles of civil rights and liberties in the name of religious freedom are frightening. I am reminded that when Jeb Bush wanted to eliminate the no-aid-to religious-schools in Florida, he gave his replacement the deceptive title of “the Religious Freedom Amendment.” Voters turned it down 55-45 in 2012. He and the legislature went ahead to create multiple voucher programs, despite the clear language of the state constitution and the will of the voters.

Here is the view of the National Education Policy Center:

Landmark Voucher Case Could Foster Discrimination and Further Lower the Church-State Wall of Separation

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There was a misprint in the original version of this newsletter – we apologize for the error.

It takes only a quick glance at its website to reveal that LGBTQ students, staff and families are not welcome at Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, Montana.

“We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and that these two distinct, complementary sexes together reflect the image and nature of God,” the school’s Statement of Faith reads. “We believe that God created marriage to be exclusively the union of one man and one woman, and that intimate sexual activity is to occur exclusively within that union.”

Yet in all likelihood, donors to student “scholarship organizations” that issue vouchers to support this school and others will soon be eligible for 100% state tax credits, even though Montana’s constitution clearly prohibits the direct or indirect use of public funds for religious school tuition. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court is predicted to issue a strongly pro-voucher ruling when it issues its decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue,where oral arguments in the case were heard last week.

Conservative justices, who comprise a 5-4 majority of the Court, have signaled in this and other recent cases that they have little use for the “wall of separation” between church and state. Instead, they are troubled by religious institutions being denied equal access to government benefits (such as vouchers), which they see as a violation of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

Depending on the reasoning used by the Court in deciding the Espinoza case, a wide variety of state programs, including many related to education and other social services, may be transformed. Governments may be required to provide taxpayer funding to religious institutions that are not subject to anti-discrimination laws and other rules designed to protect vulnerable populations.

Currently, in 17 states where legal barriers have been cleared, a billion dollars per year is being diverted into private schools—the vast majority of which are religious. Like Stillwater, the school at the center of the Montana case, many of these religious academies openly discriminate against LGBTQ families.

“What we define as discriminatory applies differently in public and private spaces,” NEPC Fellow Julie Mead told The (Wisconsin) Daily Cardinalthis past fall. “The voucher language itself, about what schools have to permit and what they don’t have to permit, may make it possible to exclude LGBTQ kids or even straight kids whose parents are LGBTQ,” said Mead, a professor at UW Madison. “And because they have broken no law, they have not discriminated.”

Schools that receive vouchers may also be permitted to discriminate against students with disabilities. For instance, Trinity Christian Academy in Deltona, Florida, which received more than $1.5 million in vouchers last year, does not accept students with a wide variety of disabilities, including students who are not ambulatory, students with emotional disorders, and students with below-average intelligence.

Although the Montana case will almost certainly be decided in a way that promotes voucher expansion, given the Court’s majority of far-right Justices, NEPC Director and CU Boulder Professor Kevin Welner expects even more far-reaching effects. In an interview last week with Time, he said:

To the extent that we are shifting further and further away from where we were a half century ago and creating greater entanglements between states and state funding and religious institutions, that will have implications down the line, both about where our tax money goes and about public influence on private religious institutions.

Similarly, NEPC Fellow and University of Connecticut Professor Preston Green told the education news outlet Chalkbeat, “This case could gradually erode the grounding for keeping public funds specifically and totally for just public education. Even if this doesn’t happen, you could have language that could move us even more in that direction.”

“If it’s unconstitutional to exclude private religious schools from a program that provides aid for public schools, it’s hard to see where the line is drawn and where the neutrality principle ends,” Welner told the New York Times. “It’s a fascinating Pandora’s box they could open.”

As a result, some of the nation’s most vulnerable families and children may face a new wave of discrimination on a variety of different fronts. Come June, we’ll see how far the Court wants to push this new frontier.

This newsletter is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu
Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
20

A free press makes a difference. Here is proof.

On January 23, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that nearly 160 religious schools receiving vouchers from the state of Florida openly discriminate against students, families, and staff who are gay. Voucher schools drain $1 billion away from public education every year in Florida, and state legislators want to expand vouchers until they are available to every student in the state.

The next day, opinion writer Scott Maxwell of the same newspaper wrote more about public-funded religious  schools rejecting students and families. He wrote:

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.

The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

On January 28, the Orlando Sentinel wrote an editorial criticizing the major corporations that declare their opposition to discrimination yet have poured millions into support of Florida’s discriminatory voucher program. Ouch! Profits or principles? The editorial writer reviewed the list of major corporations that support the voucher programs while declaring their opposition to bias.

The first corporation that announced it would no longer subsidize bigotry was Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank.

Then Wells Fargo dropped out.

Valerie Strauss wrote about the defections here.

Others have pulled out, including Wyndham Hotels, Allegiant Airlines and Rosen Hotels. Most corporations don’t stop and think and realize that every dollar that goes to an unregulated, unaccountable religious school is taken away from the state’s underfunded public schools. 

There may be other defectors. The defections may only be temporary.

Vouchers open the way to a slippery slope.

The Supreme Court may decide, if asked, that a school may ban the child of gay parents if its religious beliefs dictate the child’s exclusion. After all, it previously decided, with its two Trump appointees, that a baker could refuse to sell his cake to a gay couple.

That’s what Betsy DeVos has spent her life advancing: a world in which one’s religious beliefs trump others’ civil rights.

Today the target is gays. Who will it be next time? African-Americans? Jews? Muslims?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Florida, Religion, Vouchers

Those Christian Textbooks Adopted in Schools That Receive Taxpayer Funding

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
93

In 2017, the Orlando Sentinel published a powerful three-part series about unregulated and unaccountable voucher schools in Florida, called “Schools Without Rules.” In Florida, voucher schools receive $1 billion each year of taxpayer funding.

In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel published an article about the textbook companies that supply teaching materials to voucher schools and homeschoolers. Their books incorporate religious values into their content.

Prominent among them is the ABeka company in Florida.

Their textbooks reflect a religious approach to science, history, and other subjects.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote:

One of the largest suppliers of materials for private schools and home-school students across the United States is affiliated with a small Christian college in the Florida Panhandle.

Abeka, formerly known as A Beka Book, is named for Beka Horton, who along with her husband, Arlin, founded a small Christian school in 1954 and Pensacola Christian College in 1974…

Today, Abeka Academy Inc. takes in $45.6 million in revenue — $6 million less than its reported expenses of $51 million — according to the nonprofit’s tax documents for the financial year that ended May 2017.

Abeka, along with the Bob Jones University-affiliated BJU Press and Accelerated Christian Education Inc., is among the most popular curricula used by Christian schools that take part in Florida’s $1 billion voucher program, which pays for children from low-income families or those with special needs to attend private schools.

Though the Hortons retired from the college in 2012, Abeka carries on the couple’s legacy of what it calls a “Biblical perspective.”

For example, the company describes its teachings in the subject of history this way: “We present government as ordained by God for the maintenance of law and order, not as a cure-all for humanity’s problems. We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of Communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe. In short, Abeka offers a traditional, conservative approach to the study of what man has done with the time God has given him.”

The Orlando Sentinel described the curriculum in Christian schools that are funded by taxpayer dollars:

Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and humans lived together, that God’s intervention prevented Catholics from dominating North America and that slaves who “knew Christ” were better off than free men who did not.

The lessons taught at these schools come from three Christian publishing companies whose textbooks are popular on many of about 2,000 campuses that accept, and often depend on, nearly $1 billion in state scholarships, or vouchers.

At the Orlando Sentinel’s request, educators from Florida colleges and school districts reviewed textbooks and workbooks from these publishers, looking at elementary reading and math, middle school social studies and high school biology materials.

They found numerous instances of distorted history and science lessons that are outside mainstream academics. The books denounce evolution as untrue, for example, and one shows a cartoon of men and dinosaurs together, telling students the Biblical Noah likely brought baby dinosaurs onto his ark. The science books, they added, seem to discourage students from doing experiments or even asking questions.
“Students who have learned science in this kind of environment are not prepared for college experiences,” said Cynthia Bayer, a biology lecturer at the University of Central Florida who reviewed the science books. “They would be intellectually disadvantaged.”

The social studies books downplay the horrors of slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans, they said. One book, in its brief section on the civil rights movement, said that “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people.”

The books are rife with religious and political opinions on topics such as abortion, gay rights and the Endangered Species Act, which one labels a “radical social agenda.” They disparage religions other than Protestant Christianity and cultures other than those descended from white Europeans. Experts said that was particularly worrisome given that about 60 percent of scholarship students are black or Hispanic.

The newspaper story contains illustrations that appear in the textbooks, showing humans and dinosaurs co-existing.

Page from a high school biology workbook
Page from a high school biology workbook (ACE)
Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Steve Hinnefeld: Voucher Schools Should Not Be Allowed to Discriminate. And They Should be Regulated.

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
28

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reports here that a Democratic legislator has proposed a bill that prevents voucher schools from discriminating against students, staff, or families based on their religion, race, sexual orientation, or disability.

Bill Phillis of Ohio has proposed that religious schools that get vouchers should be subject to the same laws and regulations as public schools and should be required to report their finances and take the same state tests as other publicly funded schools.

Will legislators in Ohio and Indiana tolerate any restrictions on voucher schools?

Will they too be required to be accountable in exchange for getting public money?

Or will the public be forced to pay for schools that discriminate and schools that indoctrinate their students into their religious world-view?

 

Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Indiana, Ohio, Religion, Vouchers

Randi Weingarten on Oral Arguments in Espinoza V. Montana Case Before Supreme Court Today

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2020 //
17

Espinoza v. Montana could turn out to be the pivotal case in the battle over public funding of religious education. Will the Supreme Court rule narrowly or broadly? Will their decision defund public schools so that religious schools may be funded by the state?

The oral arguments were conducted yesterday. Randi Weingarten, who is a lawyer, released this statement:

For Immediate Release
January 22, 2020

Contact:

AFTSCOTUS@skdknick.com
AFT’s Weingarten Reacts to Oral Arguments in Espinoza v. Montana

Supreme Court Could Unleash Earthquake Threatening Public Education and Religious Liberty
 

WASHINGTON—Following today’s Supreme Court oral arguments in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement:
“Today’s argument revealed a closely divided court that appeared skeptical of the most far-reaching and dangerous theories advanced by the petitioners.
“Thankfully, several justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, questioned the petitioners’ standing and asked hard questions of the right-wing Institute for Justice, which is trying to advance a contradictory and truly radical legal theory that would undermine public financing of public education in 38 states.
“Make no mistake, if a majority of the justices side with the petitioners, the Supreme Court will be responsible for unleashing a virtual earthquake in this country that threatens both religious liberty and public education. It would turn more than two centuries of American history and our understanding of the Constitution and religious liberty on their head, and mandate public taxpayer support for religious schools.   
“We know that in previous cases, Justice Roberts did not embrace this kind of radical rewrite of the Constitution. But the right wing has been stealthy in how it has operated, knowing the court is acutely aware of public opinion.
“This case is being spearheaded by the right-wing IFJ, which has collected tens of millions of dollars from the Waltons, the DeVoses, Charles Koch and other wealthy donors to attack public education. They are bankrolling this effort as a backdoor attempt to get the court to impose Betsy DeVos’ failed agenda of private school vouchers nationwide. It is no coincidence that DeVos was at the court in person today to hear oral arguments.
“As a person of faith, I’m deeply worried about the impact this case could have. Our freedom to practice our religion comes from free exercise clause and the separation of church and state. The framers never intended to require public funding of religious institutions or schools. In fact, that’s exactly what the free exercise clause and the separation of church and state were meant to prevent. And as a teacher and a believer in public education, I am deeply worried about the effects of this case on the financing of our public schools, which are attended by 90 percent of our children.
“Teachers, students, parents, school staff, and all allies who believe in public education understand the stakes. Whatever the court decides, we will continue our fight to oppose this blatant attack on our nation’s very foundations.”

 

Categories Accountability, Religion, Separation of church and state

Ohio: Legislator Says State Has “Duty” to Fund Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2020 //
8

Bill Phillis writes here about State Senator Matt Huffman, who is leading the fight to expand vouchers in Ohio. Phillis contrasts Huffman’s view with the state constitution. The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Espinoza v. Montana today, where plaintiffs seek to strike down all prohibitions by states of funding religious schools. Such a decision, encouraged by the Trump administration,  would validate Huffman’s assertion.

Bill Phillis writes:

Senator Matt Huffman: “shall be the duty of the General Assembly to fund the means of religious education”
 
Senator Matt Huffman, on Karen Kasler’s January 17, 2020 State of Ohio show (about 5 minutes into the show), said it is the constitutional duty of the General Assembly to fund the means of religious education. WOW. This is a brand new interpretation of the state’s constitutional responsibility.
What does the Constitution require of the state regarding the funding of education? Constitutional provisions relevant to the public common school system and education in general are reproduced below.
 
Article VI Section 1
Funds for Religious and Educational Purposes
The principal of all funds, arising from the sale, or other disposition of lands, or other property, granted or entrusted to this state for educational and religious purposes, shall be used or disposed of in such manner as the General Assembly shall prescribe by law.
(1851, am. 1968)
Article VI Section 2
School Funds
The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, 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 3
Public School System, Boards of Education
Provision shall be made by law for the organization, administration and control of the public school system of the state supported by public funds: provided, that each school district embraced wholly or in part within any city shall have the power by referendum vote to determine for itself the number of members and the organization of the district board of education, and provision shall be made by law for the exercise of this power by such school districts.
Article VI Section 4
State Board of Education
There shall be a state board of education which shall be selected in such manner and for such terms as shall be provided by law. There shall be a superintendent of public instruction, who shall be appointed by the state board of education. The respective powers and duties of the board and of the superintendent shall be prescribed by law.
(1912, am. 1953)
Article I Section 7
Rights of Conscience; Education; the Necessity of Religion and Knowledge
All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any form of worship, against his consent; and no preference shall be given, by law, to any religious society; nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted. No religious test shall be required, as a qualification for office, nor shall any person be incompetent to be a witness on account of his religious belief; but nothing herein shall be construed to dispense with oaths and affirmations. Religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to pass suitable laws, to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.
Phillis comments:
What do these provisions mean?
·        The state has the responsibility to fund a thorough and efficient system of common schools (Article VI section 2)
·        The state has the duty of providing for the organization, administration and control of the public school system supported by public funds (Article VI section 3)
·        Article VI sections 2 and 3 require the state to maintain and fund the public common school system.
·        The state has the duty to protect all religious groups in the exercise of public worship (Article I section 7)
·        The state has no right to compel any person to support any place of worship (use of tax funds to support religious institutions is contrary to the intent of Article I section 7
·        The state has the duty to encourage school and the means of instruction (Article I section 7)
·        The state has the duty to “use or dispose of funds” derived from the sale of lands or other property granted or entrusted to the state for education and religious purposes (Article VI section 1). Essentially funds are available pursuant to Article VI section 1.
Phillis asks:
Where in the Constitution is there authority for the state to support private religious schools, much less the duty to do so?
Categories Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state

The Future of Public Education Hinges on This Supreme Court Case

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2020 //
41

Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in a crucial case called Espinoza v. Montana.

The goal of the Espinoza plaintiffs is to strike down state laws that prohibit public funding for religious schools.

This is a case that could not only erase the line between church and state but could actually compel states to fund religious schools. It would require states to fund religious schools of every kind, and no one knows who will determine what is a legitimate religious school. It would divert funding from public schools to support students enrolled in religious schools, now and in the future.

The plaintiffs are represented by the libertarian Institute for Justice. Its efforts on behalf of school choice have been funded over the years by anti-public school activists like the Walton Family Foundation (which has launched one of every four charter schools in the U.S.), the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee (which fought in court to establish vouchers in that city), the DeVos family, and the Koch Foundation.

Twenty or thirty or forty years ago, the Supreme Court would have dismissed this case out of hand. In the past, the Court ruled that states should pay for ancillary matters like transportation and textbooks in religious schools, but not tuition.

But the Supreme Court today has a 5-4 conservative majority. Many conservative justices in the past were moderates compared to those now on the court. The two justices appointed by Trump are religious extremists who can be counted on to rule in favor of access to public funding for religious groups as well as their “freedom” to discriminate against those groups who offend their religious beliefs.

For more about this case and its ties to the evangelical right and anti-union funders, read this article that appeared in In These Times. 

The Washington Post described the case:

KALISPELL, Mont. — It is a blessed time at Stillwater Christian School, where Scripture adorns the gymnasium wall, enrollment is climbing and Head of School Jeremy Marsh awaits the four new classrooms that will be built in the spring.

It is a place that embraces the beliefs that sinners avoid eternal condemnation only through Jesus Christ, that a marriage consists of one man and one woman and that “human life is of inestimable worth in all its dimensions . . . from conception through natural death.”

“The religious instruction isn’t just in little pockets of Bible class,” Marsh said. “It really comes out as we are learning in all classes.”
If a family craves Stillwater’s academic rigor but not its evangelism, Marsh said he will gently advise that “this might not be the place for them.”

Parents who believe religious schools such as Stillwater absolutely are the places for their children are at the center of what could be a landmark Supreme Court case testing the constitutionality of state laws that exclude religious organizations from government funding available to others. In this case, the issue rests on whether a scholarship fund supported by tax-deductible donations can help children attending the state’s private schools, most of which are religious.

Arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.

A decision in their favor would “remove a major barrier to educational opportunity for children nationwide,” plaintiffs said in their brief to the Supreme Court. It is part of a movement by school choice advocates such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to allow government support of students seeking what she recently called “faith-based education.”


Said Erica Smith, a lawyer representing the parents: “If we win this case, it will be the U.S. Supreme Court once again saying that school choice is fully constitutional and it’s a good thing and it’s something parents should have. And that will provide momentum to the entire country.”


Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said such a ruling would be a “virtual earthquake,” devastating to the way states fund public education.

And Montana told the court that, as in 37 other states, it is reasonable for its constitution to prohibit direct or indirect aid to religious organizations.
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The No-Aid Clause does not prohibit any religious practice,” Montana said in its brief. “Nor does it authorize any discriminatory benefits program. It simply says that Montana will not financially aid religious schools.”


But Montana is being called before a Supreme Court increasingly skeptical of such stark lines between church and state. A majority of justices in 2017 said Missouri could not ban a church school from requesting a grant from a state program that rehabilitated playgrounds. They have since been joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who has signaled other such restrictions deserve the court’s attention.


The Montana case is prompted by a 2015 decision by the state’s legislature to create a tax-credit program for those who wanted to donate to a scholarship fund. The program allowed dollar-for-dollar tax credits to those who donated up to $150 to an organization that provides aid to parents who want to send their children to private school.


About 70 percent of qualifying private schools in Montana are affiliated with a religion, so that meant at least some of the money would go there.
And that conflicts with a section of the state constitution that prohibits public funds for “any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.”


Litigation followed, and the Montana Supreme Court ultimately struck down the program — for religious and nonreligious private schools — and said Montana’s provision did not violate religious protections in the U.S. Constitution.

The Montana Constitution that is now being challenged was adopted in 1972.

The amicus briefs supporting Montana and opposing public support for religious schools are attached here.

 

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state
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