CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- When does an issue capture enough public attention that policymakers act? Has the exponential growth of EdChoice school districts for the 2020-2021 school year created enough concern that Ohio’s lawmakers will mitigate the damage that school vouchers inflict on public school budgets?

As reported by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, legislative leaders have acknowledged the need for some kind of fix before the floodgates open on Feb. 1 for next year’s vouchers. Is this the moment?

When the Ohio Department of Education released the list of EdChoice districts for 2021, it was a victorious moment for education privatizers in the state legislature. They had engineered into law so many changes in the criteria used to dub a school district as “EdChoice,” the status needed to open the public purse for private school tuition, that next fall more than 400 of Ohio’s 612 school districts will have to pay for the education of students who do not attend their schools. This includes 18 districts in Cuyahoga County, up from seven two years ago.

Susie Kaeser is the education specialist with the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

The list of EdChoice districts is reported by county on the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) website. I mapped those districts for 2020 and found EdChoice schools in 86 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Every state senator will represent some families who will now be able to seek a voucher to attend a willing religious or other private school. This unorthodox use of public funds is now the norm.

The legislature, the guardian of the public school system, has forsaken its responsibility for the common good.

Vouchers are funded by the deduction method, which means part of the cost is picked up by local districts. Until voucher costs show up on the expense column of a school district budget, it may be hard to see that they threaten education quality and the viability of a community. But that is what is at stake.

Voucher access is now on a scale that, if not reined in, will permanently damage public education as a resource for the children of our state.

Ohio’s school funding system is broken. It is underfunded, allows for vast differences in opportunity from district to district, and relies much too heavily on local property taxes. Vouchers exacerbate every weakness of the current system.

Diverting public funds from more public school students to pay for private school education will make it nearly impossible to create an affordable funding policy for Ohio’s public schools. It will cost too much to fill the growing holes in local budgets.

Cuyahoga County is hard-hit by vouchers. Data provided by the Legislative Service Commission for the 2018-19 school year shows that 18 Ohio districts lost the equivalent of more than 10 percent of their state aid to pay for vouchers, and 11 were in Cuyahoga County. The hardest-hit is my community, Cleveland Heights.

Legislators can no longer write off vouchers as a big-city problem. Starting next fall, rural senators from the northwest, southern, mid-central and eastern parts of Ohio who have voted for vouchers will each represent dozens of newly designated EdChoice districts, as will many who represent suburban districts. The ODE list shows that Sen. Matt Huffman, the architect of privatization, will represent 17 EdChoice school districts in the seven counties in his district.

Districts everywhere operate on tight budgets. Every dollar counts. Now that EdChoice will undermine public school budgets statewide, will the legislature stand up for public schools?

The public officials who endorse privatization hold the future of our public schools in their hands. Now that vouchers negatively impact their public school constituents, will they care?

This is where our voices matter. If you think public schools need adequate funds, that inequality of resources is unacceptable, that increasing reliance on local property taxes is unfair, then let Ohio lawmakers know they need to protect the budgets of public schools.

Right now, state legislators can provide financial relief to hard-hit districts where voucher costs have reached a crisis level, especially high-poverty districts. They can pause the growth of EdChoice schools. They can make the income-based vouchers that are already funded the option for new vouchers. These steps would be a good start.

Susie Kaeser, a public education advocate and kindergarten volunteer at Boulevard Elementary School in Cleveland Heights, is the education specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio. She is active with the Heights Coalition for Public Education, an all-volunteer citizen group that focuses on state education policy, and is retired director of Reaching Heights, a community support organization for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District.

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