Should state allocate even more public funds for unregulated private schools? O-H-I-NO.
Ohio used to be 5th in the nation when it comes to education. Since Republicans have taken over, we’ve fallen to 29th.
The right-wing Buckeye Institute released a policy brief on Jan. 16 detailing their recommendations for the One-Time Strategic Community Investments Fund. Unsurprisingly, their top proposal is to create a slush fund for private and charter schools to use public dollars to improve and expand their buildings, or even build new ones. They claim that because of the increase in students receiving vouchers, classroom space for these students is decreasing at a rate they are unprepared to support.
During the state budget process, House and Senate Republicans decided to expand the school voucher program to promote school “choice” (mostly for students already attending private religious schools). However, early reports indicate that it is already way over last year’s budget estimates. So, in addition to allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to just 150,000 students while also diverting precious funds away from our public schools, the state might consider proposals to give even more money to less-regulated schools.
Why don’t we focus on the 90% of Ohio students who go to public schools? You’ll hear Republicans complain that public schools are “failing” or “underperforming,” but at some point, we have to stop and ask ourselves why that might be the case. It could be because
We are asking public schools to continuously do more with less.
We are not adequately paying our teachers a salary that reflects the hard work they put in.
We are not adequately preparing students for the K-12 classroom by refusing to even consider universal pre-k.
It has been said that if you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day, but if you teach them to fish, you feed them for life. We are expecting public schools to teach over 1 million students without even leading them to a fishing spot, much less giving them a pole and step-by-step directions.
If we were really a “pro-life, pro-child” state, we would do more to address the core issue: students, teachers, and families need more resources! Students are struggling in schools and we’re diverting away necessary funds because, as Republicans claim, there’s no saving them.
Our school funding system was declared unconstitutional in 1997. Our new Fair School Funding Plan is still being phased in because of a lack of funding. Rather than moving to fully subsidize private, religious education, we should fully back our once highly rated education system that has been chronically underfunded despite Ohio Supreme Court decisions.
State Senator Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) represents Ohio’s 25th Senate District, which encompasses areas of Franklin County, including Columbus' Clintonville, Italian Village, Northland, Ohio State University District, South Linden and Victorian Village neighborhoods, Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: DeMora: Ohio must put more money into public schools, not private ones
