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Columbus Dispatch: Bill to expand school vouchers draws flak

Districts consider House proposal a threat; backers cite need

By  Catherine Candisky
The Columbus Dispatch
Wednesday September 28, 2011 7:42 AM

Public schools are stepping up efforts to derail previously obscure legislation that could divert millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded schools to private and parochial ones.

The Worthington Board of Education this week became the first local district to formally oppose House Bill 136, which would offer low- and middle-class parents tax-funded vouchers to pay private-school tuition, regardless of how well their public schools are doing.

Currently, vouchers are available only to parents of students attending low-performing schools. Family income is irrelevant.

The bill would award scholarships ranging from $2,313 to $4,626 to families with household incomes up to $95,000 a year on a sliding scale. The total amount of the voucher would be deducted from the state aid to the local school district.

The potential loss for local districts is staggering because the legislation also would make vouchers available to qualifying families of the nearly 200,000 students currently enrolled in private schools. Under the bill, private-school students would be phased into the program over four years, starting with those in kindergarten.

Board President Marc Schare said the scholarship would exceed the roughly $1,300 the district gets in per-pupil state aid each year, so Worthington schools would lose as much as $3,300 in tax dollars and have to make that up with money generated from local levies.

“The issue is the diversion of local property-tax dollars to a cause other than what it was intended to do,” said Schare, who calls himself a school-choice proponent. “It would be as if the legislature took dollars from a local library levy and used those dollars to fund gift certificates for Barnes & Noble. They might do a better job for some people, but that isn’t why the money was generated in the first place.”

Public-school advocates are turning up the heat on lawmakers after a House committee controlled by majority Republicans recommended passage of the bill along a mostly party-line vote.

“The bill needs to be killed. It’s bad for public education. This is privatization, not school choice,” said Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association.

The organization alerted local boards this week, urging them to call their representatives and pass resolutions opposing the bill. It’s unclear how many families would qualify for a voucher. But it could be significant considering that more than 40 percent of Ohio’s 1.8 million public-school students are eligible for the federal lunch program.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said he will be meeting with superintendents and thinks the bill will need to be reworked to secure enough votes to pass the House.

Some, he said, think the income requirements should be lowered and others oppose a provision that allows unused voucher money to go into an account that parents can use for other educational expenses. For instance, if a parent doesn’t need the full voucher for elementary-school tuition, they can save it and apply it toward high-school tuition, which tends to be more expensive, or even tuition at an Ohio college or university — public or private.

“I think the system should be based on need, not geography,” Huffman said. “I’m trying to fill a gap for people who don’t have a real option for a brick-and-mortar school and equalize the inequities in the current program.”

Chad L. Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio, said, “This bill puts the focus on the needs of the individual students.”

Ohio, he said, is the only state awarding vouchers based on school performance. Other states provide them based on income.

Carolyn Jerkowitz, of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, said her board supports efforts to provide financial assistance to parents wanting to send their children to Catholic and other private schools. That said, there might not be room for everyone who wants to come.

“We don’t open schools that quickly. There are schools with room in them, but not necessarily room in every class,” she said.