As inaugurated, vouchers could only be used by pupils living in the Cleveland school district. And the amount of tax money the Republican-run legislature agreed to spend on Ohio’s first “school choice” sally in the 1995 budget was about $5.25 million, about 44 cents per current Ohio resident. The budget Gov. Mike DeWine just signed allots about $2.44 billion for voucher programs over the next two years, about $205 per Ohio resident.
Judge Page’s decision was a clear-cut victory for the public school systems supporting the Vouchers Hurt Ohio coalition (lead plaintiff in the lawsuit: the Columbus schools). Some of the lawsuit’s many other anti-voucher plaintiffs: the Dayton public schools; the Centerville, Fairborn, Hamilton, Middletown, Springfield, Xenia and Yellow Springs schools; and Mike DeWine’s Greene County district, the Cedar Cliff (Cedarville) schools.
The state will appeal Judge Page’s decision to the Ohio Court of Appeals (10th District), in Columbus. If that court upholds the Common Pleas ruling — it likely will — the state would undoubtedly ask the Ohio Supreme Court (6-1 Republican) to save the voucher program. And the high court’s GOP incumbents have shown zero appetite for challenging the similarly GOP-run General Assembly.
Reduced to essentials, the judge ruled Ohio’s school voucher spending is unconstitutional in numerous ways, siding with school voucher foes on three key issues.
First, the plaintiffs argued vouchers breached the Ohio Constitution, which requires the General Assembly to create and fund “a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.” She found instead that “the evidence ... (showed) that, in expanding the EdChoice program to its current form, the General Assembly (had) created a system of uncommon private schools by directly providing private schools with over $700 million in funding.”
Page said voucher foes had also shown the state had additionally violated Ohio’s constitutional requirement to maintain a “thorough and efficient” school system. How? When legislative Republicans decided against fully funding what’s known as the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan. Result: Ohio public schools received $6.48 billion in state aid instead of $7.24 billion for fiscal year 2022. She said the difference was close to the amount of state voucher funding that same fiscal year.
Finally, the judge agreed with voucher foes that because the program “provides private religious schools with approximately $1 billion in public school funds (the voucher program) violates ... the Ohio Constitution by giving a religion or other sect the exclusive right to, or control of, a part of the school funds of Ohio.”
What the judge didn’t say, but fairly might have observed, is that steady increases in Ohio’s state tax subsidies for non-public schools amount to Statehouse government by stealth: Start small, then, budget-by-budget, divert more and more public school money to private schools.
The resulting squeeze on public schools is a big reason why skyrocketing property taxes are hammering homeowners — property tax burdens the General Assembly is making heavier by steadily giving what should be public school money to private schools.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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