“Take the (Public) Money, or Else!”
ProPublica Uncovers More Voucher Letters from Schools to Parents
So much for this being about parents’ choice!
A few months ago, I wrote about the astounding letter written to parents by a private school administrator in the Columbus area—strongly urging them to accept the new state voucher, and including this chart on how much each family already going to the school would save due to those public funds:
The letter included this not so subtle paragraph: “Please note: If a family elects to not apply for the universal EdChoice scholarship available to them, we will respect that decision. Supplemental financial aid from the parish in this case will require a meeting with [X] before being awarded.”
So…if you don’t accept the public funds, you have to meet with a school administrator before being eligible for financial aid. Feels like you’re being sent to the principal’s office, doesn’t it?
Well, not surprisingly, that was not the only letter of this type sent out from Ohio private and religious schools to parents.
In a story that came out last week, ProPublica uncovered additional letters that were even more pushy in instructing families to accept public vouchers for their kids’ private/religious education.
In Youngstown, parents of kids at Holy Family school received an even more explicit message:
“As you are aware, ALL students attending Holy Family School will be eligible for the EdChoice Scholarship. We are requesting that all families register their child/ren for this scholarship as soon as possible.”
In bold, the letter emphasized: “It is imperative that you register for EdChoice for each of your students. We are waiting to send invoices until your EdChoice Scholarship has been awarded.”
And near Columbus, parents sending their kids to Columbus Jewish Day School received a similar letter:
“The Board has voted to require all families receiving financial assistance … to apply for the EdChoice Program. We also encourage all families paying full tuition to apply for this funding…I am looking forward to a great year — a year of learning, growing, and caring for each other. Let’s turn that caring into action by applying for the EdChoice Program.”
Also, not surprisingly, ProPublica found that the letters had their intended impact.
Holy Family’s principal told the reporter: “One hundred percent of our students are on it…We made it that way — we made our families fill out the form, and we’re going from there.”
According to the story: the principal “said that some families had been reluctant to apply, but that the school told them that if they did not do so, they could not qualify for any of the school’s discounts from its $5,900 tuition, such as the ones Holy Family offers to second and third children from the same family.”
As for Columbus Jewish Day School, some parents wrote the school back, concerned that forcing parents to apply for the vouchers would drain public schools of precious resources. Here’s what they wrote:
“We chose to send our children to CJDS in large part because of its commitment to tikkun olam, the Jewish obligation to build a better and more equitable world.” Requiring that they apply for public vouchers “(1) puts pressure on CJDS families to betray their own values by requiring them to seek out vouchers that they may be morally and ethically opposed to in order to obtain any financial aid; and (2) sends a message to the parents, the public, and other private and public schools that CJDS endorses and is willing to benefit from the EdChoice program, even though the program runs counter to core Jewish values and basic tenets of social justice.”
Receiving this letter, the school softened its approach—but one of the concerned parents said that “a lot of the damage was already done.”
In trying to talk to more parents, the ProPublica reporter ended its story on this note:
“Visits to both CJDS and St. Brendan to ask other parents what they made of the voucher debate, in the parking lot during school drop-off and pickup, were unsuccessful: At both schools, administrators…came outside to tell this reporter to vacate the premises. Regardless of how much public funding the schools receive, they are, after all, private.”
Oooof.
The 2023 Explosion
These are just the letters we know about.
But play this all out for a moment.
Imagine the impact of a giveaway of taxpayer funds that offers, with no limitations or restrictions, thousands of dollars to offset the costs of something you are already doing? Something you already could afford and are already paying for?
Now imagine if you receive a letter strongly suggesting—or worse, demanding—that you accept those funds, or face consequences?
Now project that all across Ohio, and what happens?
You guessed it…a mad dash for those funds.
In a prior post, I shared just how much the overall cost of paying for students to go to schools they already attended is exploding. Well, it just keeps climbing higher.
As public school advocate William Phillis told ProPubica: “It’s soon going to be a billion dollars annually, and it’s coming right out of the school funds.” (Just as those parents’ worried would happen).
And because of the absence of restrictions, the beneficiaries of that flood of public funds are disproportionately those at the higher end of the income spectrum, who were already attending private schools. I provided a lot of that data in my prior post:
While in 2018, 3.6% of Grade 9-12 new voucher recipients had not attended a public school in the prior year, in 2022, that number had leapt to 66.6%!
Statewide voucher recipients were 31.8% low-income in 2015; by 2023, the number had fallen to 14.9%.
My friend and education expert Steve Dyer analyzed the data and found even more stunning numbers:
“[M]ore new [] voucher (high school) recipients come from families making more than $150,000 a year than families making less than $120,000 a year;”
“There are more new vouchers flowing to subsidize private high school students whose families make as much as $250,000 a year (or MORE!) than there are flowing to subsidize private high school students whose families make less than 1/2 that much”
“An astounding $1.3 million of your tax dollars went to subsidize the private school tuitions of families who make more than $250,000 a year!”
“On the regular EdChoice voucher…, $242 million of the $272 million sent out to subsidize private school tuition went to families in the highest income brackets.”
“That’s nearly $9 out of every $10 going to subsidize private school tuitions through regular EdChoice went to subsidize families who could already afford to send their kids to private schools.”
Worst of all, ALL of this is happening in state after state. Back to ProPublica: “vouchers have expanded to become available to most or all children in 10 states: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia.”
And many of these states (like Ohio) are pushing for another privatization scheme called Education Savings Accounts, which will allow parents to use public funds in non-chartered, unrelated schools. Truly entering the Wild West.
Finally, in states like Texas, where some rural Republican legislators have (to their credit) opposed such schemes because they know they will damage their local/rural public schools, a large SuperPAC is attacking them in primaries with absurdly misleading ads—making it look like these officials are the ones undermining public schools:
These ads shows you to things:
so much of this is driven by big money.
look at that second photo…even those attacking public schools know that school funding is actually popular. Cutting it is not. So they have to mislead the voters about what’s really going on/
Prepare for a long battle here, folks.
And it is one we can not lose.
How is this not a violation of the First Amendment? I do not want and do not consent to my tax dollars being used to subsidize someone else's religion or religious education. If we had an uncorrupted SCOTUS, this would have already been struck down.
David - You might also mention the Ohio Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) program where Ohio taxpayers can earn a dollar-for-dollar tax credit up to $750 ($1,500 for joint filers) for funding K5-12 scholarships for children with a financial need. Basically this allows for the redirection of your tax payment from Ohio to go to any school (including private religious schools) that has established an SGO affiliated non-profit. In addition to claiming a state tax credit for your contribution, if you itemize deductions you can claim a deduction on your federal income tax return. The program started in 2021 and has become immensely popular among private schools in Ohio. Here is some additional information on the SGO program: https://www.fosterandmotley.com/insights/2023/10/26/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-sgo-tax-credit-in-ohio