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Universal vouchers became reality in Ohio with the budget that passed in 2023.

Applications and costs zoomed up.

But as questions remain about whether that's sustainable over time, a lawsuit continues over whether vouchers are legal under Ohio's Constitution.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of ohio.

I'm karen Kasler.

A big change to state policy in 2023 was the creation of what amounts to universal vouchers.

The ad choice program offering taxpayer paid tuition assistance for private schools used to be for lower income kids and failing school buildings.

A provision in the state budget allows for any family that wants a voucher to get one, even if their kids never attended public school and no matter how high their income.

Kids up to eighth grade can get just over $6,000.

And high school students around 80 $400.

Families making more than 450% of the federal poverty level or $135,000 a year for a family of four, would get less voucher money.

So applications for ed choice expansion vouchers poured in.

More than 71,000 applications were approved, and the costs soar from the $240 million in the budget to $397 million.

In a report from the office that does research for state lawmakers to a total of $412 million.

And Republican lawmakers who backed the expansion are not worried about the long term costs.

They've said they hope more families apply.

The state's five voucher programs are expected to cost the state more than $1,000,000,000 a year by fiscal year 2025.

And the numbers of people applying for the ED choice expansion will likely drive that total even higher.

Nearly 150 school districts have sued the state, saying vouchers siphon funds from constitutionally mandated public education.

In September, I talked to two members of the coalition called Vouchers hurt Ohio.

Dan Hynes is the treasurer pro-tem of the University Heights Cleveland Heights School Board and is also a history teacher in the Shahan Local schools.

Another district in the lawsuit, Eric Brown, is a member of the Columbus Board of Education until the end of this year and is on the vouchers hurt Ohio Steering Committee.

He's also a Democratic former chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.

We know that the voucher program as it currently exists, violates the state constitution in five different ways.

We have five claims that are very clearly stated in the lawsuit, and we're very fortunate in Ohio, actually, because the language of the Ohio Constitution is actually very, very clear.

But in terms of the real impact of this program on public schools and it being an existential threat, I really think that that's true, because with the universal voucher entitlement program, $1,000,000,000 is now being taken off of the top of the line item that is there to fund public education in Ohio.

Ohio's constitution orders the legislature to fund a thorough and efficient system of public education.

That line item is now being depleted by $1,000,000,000 a year that is being diverted to families using private schools.

So we can't pretend that $1,000,000,000 a year isn't going to be felt in Ohio's great public school classrooms.

I'm very fortunate to live in a community that understand and support the great power and promise of public education.

But those taxpayers have have blessed us with filling the gap by passing levies as the vouchers depleted what was what was sent to us.

There were years when we when we lost $10 million a year and more to vouchers.

Now it's being funded differently today.

But what they've done is they've distributed the pain to all of the districts in the state of Ohio instead of focusing them on just a few as they were during those years.

Eric Brownlee asked you, The lawsuit says private school tuitions are subsidized at significantly higher rates as compared to the per Pupil Foundation funding allotted for Ohio's public schools students.

And that's the opposite of what voucher supporters, including Republican Senate President Matt Hoffman, have said.

They say it's actually cheaper to give a child a voucher than to educate that child in public school.

That's nonsense.

And, you know, it certainly takes dollars from public schools, siphons it and puts it over in the public schools, whether they do it directly as it used to flow through the public school or indirectly, as opposed from our line item in the state budget to the private schools.

It's it's costly to us either way.

Columbus City schools, for example, works to the tune of $18 million.

So obviously, we're the largest in the state, but we have both the largest number of students who are going to these schools as well as being the largest overall.

So a lot of private and charter schools here and Columbus.

On that note, let me ask you another claim that Ed Choice voucher supporters have said is that vouchers help ease segregation and create more racially balanced school districts because black students are more likely to apply for vouchers and receive them.

Your lawsuit says the opposite, that vouchers actually discriminate against minority students by increasing segregation.

Well, and they're simply wrong.

They rely upon a study that they did last year, actually in December of 22.

And that study is simply wrong.

It's not peer reviewed.

It is not accurate.

It is not based on the facts.

And let me ask you about that study in another part of it.

It was a study from the Fordham Institute which supports vouchers.

And it says when kids with vouchers leave schools, higher, performing students are actually left.

Is that what you're seeing in the district that you represent?

Well, you know, first I have to say that the Fordham Institute is sponsoring voucher education, voucher research reminds me of big tobacco sponsoring cancer research.

I mean, the outcome is determined by the by the check, you know.

But the bottom line here is, in terms of students who are leaving public schools and go and using vouchers to go to private schools, you know, this was initially sold to Ohio taxpayers as an opportunity for students to flee failing schools.

But the data with two different newspapers in the state of Ohio have proven independently that the overwhelming majority of the students who use vouchers to attend private schools end up scoring lower on the state tests than do the students who remained at the public schools.

And so the idea that people are fleeing failing schools is wrong.

All that they're fleeing is a tuition bill.

The bigger picture idea of failing schools, there are voucher supporters who say that public school districts are failing because of economic, demographic, educational factors.

These are not related to vouchers, and we can't blame vouchers for those failures.

Let me ask you both.

Who wants to answer that one?

Well, we've got huge challenges in the public schools, especially the urban public schools such as Columbus.

We have a very high poverty rate and we're working at it.

We're getting better.

But we have a ways to go.

I mean, the reality is that, you know, we have a lot of students that are going to be very difficult to educate.

We need to provide quality opportunity for every single one of them, regardless of where they are.

We have to do that on an equitable basis.

And I will add, if you don't mind, that while everything that the Judge Brown said was absolutely correct, you know, public is for all.

And we have to always remember that these private schools who are taking these taxpayer funds are completely unaccountable and nontransparent.

So taxpayers don't even know what these moneys are being used for.

We're sending $1,000,000,000 to institutions that live entirely outside of the public eye.

So we know where the money is spent, not how it is spent.

And that might go to explain why the overwhelming majority of those students underperform.

The students at the schools that they left.

There is a concern about transparency and accountability with some of these schools.

Public schools have to submit to audits and public scrutiny like that.

They can't discriminate against students are mostly the private schools are mostly religious, whereas public schools are not.

The question about test scores and everything, How do you resolve some of these questions about transparency and accountability when some schools are held to certain standards and others aren't?

I, I think that the taxpayers do that because here we have the same people who passed this brand new universal voucher entitlements are the people who have campaigned on these ideas using the words transparency and accountability in all of their campaign literature.

But it's noteworthy where they don't use the words transparency and accountability, and that's in the legislation that they passed.

Here we have an entirely new entitlement program where $1,000,000,000 is being spent to these institutions that have zero accountability and zero transparency.

Just as Brown, you were on the Ohio Supreme Court.

So obviously, you know, the Ohio Constitution, which does require a fair and equitable system of public education.

One of the categories of students I'm wondering about here, it costs difference amount different amount of money to educate different students.

And special education students do cost more money than students who don't have special needs.

So what happens to that population of students?

I mean, I know there's a voucher program specifically for special needs students, but what happens to that population when the they don't take vouchers and they are or they can't find a school that meets their needs?

Well, oftentimes in the private schools, the private schools themselves reject these students.

They can discriminate on almost any basis they want to.

So the more expensive students, such as special education, they're not going to take them, which leaves them in the public school where we have an obligation to make sure they get a quality education and to meet their needs.

And we do that.

We do that very well.

But it's expensive.

Dan Hynes, as a school board member yourself, I'm sure you have talked to parents who are concerned about their child's education.

Of course, one claim that voucher supporters have is that this lawsuit and people who don't want to see vouchers in place are trying to strip parents of their rights to select the best education for their child.

A spokesman for the Ohio Senate put it this way.

Quote, This shows the deep disdain these greedy big government elitists have for parents who make decisions that are best for the education of their children is shameful and a direct attack on Ohio families.

How do you push back on that idea that people are using vouchers to make better choices or different choices for their children than sending them to the public schools that just happened to be near where they live?

Well, you know, I celebrate the great private schools that we have throughout the state.

Ohio is very fortunate to be home to some of the finest private schools in the country, as well as many of the finest, I believe, public schools in the country.

I'm a public school teacher.

I would respond to those people, though, that, you know, we went 150 years without vouchers and those private schools were thriving without vouchers.

Here's the people who are who are too often left out of this conversation, and that's the taxpayers.

And taxpayers are being harmed deeply because it is absolutely unfair.

It is it is hard enough for taxpayers to support the public schools that they know exist in their community, to educate the students in their community and are home to the teachers in their community, asking those taxpayers to go an additional step forward to subsidize is the decision that families make to send their children to private schools is a level of entitlement that should shock every Ohioan.

No taxpayer should have to subsidize the private decision made by a family about what they want to provide their family.

This is this is not an area for public subsidies.

If this program expands, as it sure looks like it is, I mean, the expansion program has gotten a lot of parents on board with applying for these ed choice vouchers.

If so many students and maybe even most students take what is essentially free money, I mean, it's it's for any public school student or private school student to apply for a voucher.

What happens to the students who don't the students who are left in those school districts and your your left to manage them and educate them?

What happens to those students?

Well, I think that we can actually look to the Ford Institute's own study for an answer to this, because in the Ford and then the Ford Institute's own study, they tell us that the the expansion of a choice is likely to lead to a larger reliance on local property taxes, meaning levies.

And what's what's amazing about that is that it seems that these researchers, I'm tempted to use air quotes these researchers borrowed the language from the draft decision of 26 years ago, which declared the funding in Ohio to be a violation of Ohio's constitution for precisely that reason.

So Fordham Institutes own study showed this out.

And so that's the answer.

Ohio's taxpayers are harmed again, with every voucher, Ohio's taxpayers are harmed.

In September, I also talked to Chad Aldous, vice president for Ohio policy with the Thomas B Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank that advocates for educational policy that favors charter schools and school choice.

This is essentially extra state money that's going to this program that wasn't going to it before.

How is this sustainable?

Well, one of the biggest debates we've often had with private school choice programs in Ohio has been a national leader in it for more than two decades.

Is.

Who should qualify and who shouldn't.

In Cleveland, if you live in Cleveland.

There was never an income requirement.

Cleveland kids, the beginning of the program for for us, the beginning of private school choice programs.

Every family in Cleveland was eligible for a voucher.

And so.

But did all of them use it?

No.

They didn't.

So so what we don't know really, is exactly how many families will use it.

But but the question always is how much support should and should people who are always going to go to private school get.

And there are there there are at least two schools of thought on it.

One is it's a private school.

You should pay your own way.

But the other one is, look, the state requires every student in the state of Ohio to go to school.

Compulsory education laws.

And if we're doing that, shouldn't we give every family the right to pick the school that works best for their child?

And for the vast majority of students, that's always going to be their local district school.

But some might want to go to a public charter school and some might want to go to a private school.

And I think that's what we're seeing for the first time.

The state is actually putting their money behind the concept that moms and dads, you have the right to decide the school that works best for your kid.

Some of the arguments that we're also hearing on this, including from Senate President Matt Hoffman, is that it's cheaper to educate a kid and give them a voucher than it is to send a kid to public school.

That's not entirely true, is it?

Well, you know, it it all depends on how you look at costs.

Those who are opposed to private school choice programs in vouchers will look at what the state pays per pupil.

But if you're a taxpayer, you really look at total taxpayer costs.

Columbus, its northwards of $15,000 per pupil per year.

If a student leaves there and goes to Bishop Hartley, they're going to get a scholarship if they get the maximum scholarship of $8,000.

So there's there's $7,000 of play there.

That in terms of taxpayers, you're spending less to educate the same kid.

But in some school districts, the amount that the state is spending is is pretty low.

well, even in Columbus, it's only around 4000.

So the question is whether the analysis is total taxpayer dollars spent, which is state and local taxpayer or state and local dollars, or whether it's just state dollars.

So the state has has kicked in more dollars.

They said, listen, we don't want to take dollars from local school districts, and even we don't we want to transfer them any more from local school districts.

We want to pay the entire freight of voucher programs ourselves.

And they put their money where their mouth is.

They're doing it.

The lawsuit.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

And this was a lawsuit was filed two years ago.

So this is preexisting, the air choice voucher program, the expansion of it.

It says that at the voucher system, quote, poses an existential threat to Ohio's public school system.

Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio's public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio's foundation funding the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio's public schools otherwise available to already struggling school districts for the education of their students.

Does it pose that existential threat?

Well, I think the legislature's proven through the last two budget cycles that it absolutely does not.

Public school choice, public schools and private school choice.

It's not a zero sum game.

It's all about what we find and what we fund our priorities.

Public schools in the state of Ohio have never been funded at a higher level in real dollars than they are now.

We have more choice than ever now, and we have better funded public schools than ever before.

And, you know, again, the end of the day, moms and dads across the state, whatever choose school they choose, can win.

It does not have to be a zero sum game if lawmakers keep funding education appropriately and and properly.

And so far, they're doing it.

Let me ask you about some comments that your colleague Aaron Churchill made in an op ed that he wrote about this lawsuit.

For one thing, voucher opponents say that vouchers discriminate against minorities, students by increasing segregation.

Your colleague Aaron Churchill's claim that they have helped ease segregation and create more racially biased school districts because black students are more likely to apply for vouchers.

How does that work?

Yeah, so the study we did a professor, Stephan LaVar, too, from the Glenn School at Ohio State University did did an analysis of exactly what segregation looks like or the voucher programs effect on segregation.

Voucher opponents were claiming it.

It impacted segregation and made segregation worse.

Well, well, clearly that that threw up warning bells.

We were very concerned about it, because if that's true, it would make a lot of us who are private school choice supporters definitely take a step back and reassess.

Fortunately, when Dr. LaVar too, looked at the numbers and looked at where districts were before the introduction of the Age Choice program and and where they were afterward, he found that it reduced on average segregation by 10 to 15%.

Now, so why is that when it went and what are what's happening behind the scenes?

And I think what it is, is by and large, the majority of students are students of color who are using the scholarships.

But many of these districts and this is the part we don't say out loud a lot of times a lot of these districts were already segregating.

The choice program is is didn't cause the segregation.

Ohio schools and school districts have been segregating for decades.

And you can see that there are.

By that, what I mean is discriminate the.

Well a lot of it has been students moving or families moving from the from the cities to suburbs.

And so that has been going on for decades.

We have a lot of the school districts surrounding the urban areas close to open enrollment.

Now, think about that for a second.

Many of these that are signed on to the lawsuit saying, you know, we don't and are claiming the Ed Choice program discriminates, have closed their borders to students, often students of color from urban areas, from coming into their districts, even if they have capacity to serve them.

Well, I mean, so so public education doesn't take everybody.

And that's important to remember.

The end of the day, I'm very comfortable with the academic rigor.

A professor LaVar, to study.

We'll keep evaluating those numbers.

That's a very important I'm sure the court will evaluate those numbers.

But right now, it appears that many of Ohio's school districts are very segregated.

The Ed Choice program simply isn't the cause of it, and that's what needs to be at issue when we're evaluating this program.

I should note that the people who are involved in the lawsuit claim that that study that you just mentioned is not peer reviewed and they don't believe in the academic value of that study.

Well, you know, I like that they're doing that because that's an important question.

When research is done, you should always ask who did it?

What's the rigor of this study?

But but I also notice that they didn't bring that question up.

When Fordham funded a study that studied Ohio's charter school sector and found that charter schools were academically underperforming.

Nobody wanted to question the integrity of the study then.

No one no one questioned the study by David Figueiredo in 2016 about Ohio's Ed Choice voucher program that found that participants of students using the voucher scored lower on state tests.

Everybody was fine with it then.

So I appreciate their concern about whether our our studies are fair, but it seems like they only have issues with them when they disagree with the findings.

Speaking of studies, going back to that one study by Howard Fleder.

It shows the percentage of low income students getting Cleveland and Ed choice vouchers has decreased significantly.

Wasn't an argument for vouchers that kids should not be trapped in failing public schools because they couldn't afford to go to private schools?

And yet it appears these voucher programs are now giving vouchers to families who can't afford to send their kids to private schools.

Yeah, So so of course, Dr. Fleder does great work and what our concern, I think, was as we sort of dug into that, is is figuring out sort of some of the data sources.

We don't have good information on the on the at the the income level of students who are using some of these programs.

So we don't have a good reflection.

I would say, though, that if you think the the number of students using the Cleveland voucher program, that the Cleveland students are not poor or low income, that program has been serving the same 7 to 8000 kids all the way through the cycle forever.

The program hasn't changed.

So the idea that it's changing, I think what's happening is the data sources, the data availability, things like that are changing, which is making it appear more that numbers are in flux when in truth, there are a lot of economically challenged folks in Cleveland.

And and that has and they're being served by the edge by the Cleveland Scholarship program and and have been now for over two decades.

The trial and the vouchers hurt Ohio case is in the discovery phase until March.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the State House newspaper of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State News dot org or find us online by searching the state of Ohio show.

Happy New Year and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statehouse news bureau comes from medical mutual dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans offering health insurance plans as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at med mutual dot com.

The law offices of Porter right Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Right.

Is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

Moore and Porter right.

Com.

Puerto right inspired every day the Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org