The Ohio legislature delayed action on vouchers. What’s next?
Last week, Ohio legislators had an opportunity to fix a looming crisis with private school voucher funding. If no action was taken, the list of schools eligible for EdChoice performance-based vouchers was set to expand on February 1st from around 500 to more than 1200 schools! This would create a funding shortfall in school districts around the state.
Instead of solving the problems, legislators chose to punt on the issue and extend the deadline until April 1. While we are disappointed that this couldn’t be resolved last week, we recognize that the delay is better than some of the “fixes” that were discussed last week, including some proposals that would address the issues with performance-based vouchers by rapidly expanding income-based vouchers and diverting even more public money to unaccountable private schools.
It’s now up to us, as educators, as parents, as union members, as leaders in our communities, to make sure that our voices are heard over the next two months, so that we can work toward short and long term solutions that prioritize:
- Keeping public funds in our public schools;
- Restoring funding to school districts that have already been harmed by unfunded voucher deductions, including our union sisters and brothers in the Cleveland Heights Teachers Union;
- Holding private schools that receive public voucher funds accountable to the same standards as public schools.
We’re still determining what we need to do to advance these priorities. We might need to mobilize at the statehouse. We might need to set up in-district legislator meetings. We might need to even file a lawsuit or work toward a ballot initiative. But here’s what we do know right now: we can only be successful if OFT members and our community allies commit to taking action.
There is the real danger that the expansion of private school vouchers will continue to undermine our ability to ensure that Ohio fully funds quality public education for all students. Sign up to be a legislative accountability activist, and make sure your co-workers are signing up also.
Together, we can build the public education system our students and communities deserve.
