While opponents of an expansion to Ohio’s EdChoice voucher system are ramping up attacks on the diversion of funds from public to private schools, proponents are steeling themselves for a fight to stop lawmakers from interfering with the expansion and the application period set to begin Feb. 1.
Ohio lawmakers are considering putting off the pending expansion while they devise a permanent solution. On Tuesday, public-school advocates held a community forum in downtown Toledo to voice opposition to the expansion, while conservative organizations and parents met in Columbus.
“The community benefits from educated residents, and democracy relies on thoughtful voters,” said Susan Kaeser of the League of Women Voters of Ohio told the gathering of several hundred at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Main Library.
Ms. Kaeser said the voucher system marks the evolution of “35 years of incremental attacks” on public schools.
Voters support public schools, but public-school teachers are being “expected to do more and more with less and less” under the voucher program, said Kevin Dalton, president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers.
All students, no matter where they live, “deserve a quality, well-equipped school right in their neighborhood where they can learn, be inspired, and thrive,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association.
And Dan Greenberg, a teacher at Sylvania’s Southview High School and leader of the Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education, said Ohio’s current metrics for rating public education are “virtually unattainable” and erode community support by branding even top-performing school districts as failures.
At the Columbus event, Andrea De la Roca said her three children — ages 16, 14, and 11 — attend St. Benedict Catholic and St. John’s Jesuit schools. Two of them have EdChoice scholarships and the third would qualify next year. Without them, they would attend Toledo Public Schools’ Rogers High School and McTigue Elementary School.
“When my son was going to kindergarten, my cousins were going to Catholic school, so I found out that I had a choice, that my kids didn't have to go to public school,” she said. “I was born Catholic. I went to Catholic school in Guatemala, so I wanted the same experience for my children.”
Katie Sliwinski's son, Oliver, is currently an EdChoice kindergarten student attending Most Blessed Sacrament School. He has never attended public school, with Larchmont Elementary School being the one to which he would otherwise be assigned.
“It’s really important that he’s in a small school where they understand his individual needs,” she said. “For him, it’s really important that he’s surrounded by people who support what we would like for our future, who value similar things, and respect the value of education, the value of hard work.”
A Senate committee could amend the expansion provision into a higher-education bill on Wednesday that could then reach the floor for a full Senate vote. But the state House of Representatives won’t be back until next week.
Some lawmakers want to offer EdChoice scholarships statewide to all students based on family income for tuition to attend the public, private, or religious schools of their choice.
During the Toledo forum, Steve Dyer, an educational policy fellow at Innovation Ohio, said that 80 percent of Ohio families would qualify.
Already, Mr. Dyer said, the districts losing the most on a percentage basis to voucher payouts are in poor rural areas and the suburbs.
The home school district pays $4,650 per K-12 student toward tuition and $6,000 for high-school students. If those amounts exceed the per-pupil state aid that the district receives, then more of their state aid is deducted to make up the difference.
That, Ms. Kaeser said, means that affected school districts have to seek new property levies to make up the lost state aid.
In November, the Ohio Department of Education announced a list of more than 1,200 individual schools that are deemed to be underperforming based on their report-card grades, more than doubling the number of the prior year.
The broad expansion has even alarmed Republicans who normally defend vouchers because it is about to affect individual buildings in wealthier, suburban school districts that traditionally perform well as a whole on report cards.
Another change would allow private school students who’ve never attended public school to be eligible for the scholarships.
The expanding list of “underperforming” schools has fueled the fire over the credibility of the report cards themselves, already being second-guessed in Columbus.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.
First Published January 22, 2020, 1:02 a.m.
