Statehouse Attacks 330 Ohio School Districts...For Asserting their Rights, and Winning

New Bill Threatens 330 Schools Districts With Billions in Cuts

For years, school districts around Ohio—rural, suburban and urban—have come together to wage a lawsuit arguing that Ohio’s current private school voucher program violates the Ohio Constitution in multiple ways.

At times, powerful officials tried to keep them from joining the case, but in the end, 330 districts joined. That’s more than half of the districts of Ohio—from every corner. If there’s something wrong, they would know it.

And after years of work, that case led to a historic ruling last year that these districts were correct—and that the current system indeed violates the Constitution in several ways. (Now there’s an appeal.)

And facing a ruling that a program diverting billions from already underfunded public schools turns out to be illegal, what is the latest proposal from the Ohio statehouse?

Correct the flaws?

Adjust accordingly?

Nope.

Introducing a new bill that threatens all the school districts who have exercised their legal rights to protect their constituents and students, and uphold the Ohio Constitution, will lose state funding so long as they stay in their (so far successful) lawsuit. According to the bill, “[t]he department of education and workforce shall release withheld funds to the school district only upon the termination of the legal action or the district’s withdrawal from the action.”

The whole story is here.

This would amount to billions of dollars in school cuts, devastating schools, communities and families (and adding another round of pressure on property taxes). But it also is an outrageous attack on these local officials’ rights to uphold their duties to best represent districts and schools whose funding and wherewithal is under assault.

As Steve Dyer writes, the bill’s author “would rather shut school down for hundreds of thousands of Ohio Public School students than argue for his pet program in court.”

Just another reason that we need new leadership in Columbus.