Ohio’s most recent budget made significant changes to the state’s private school voucher programs. An end of the year audit of the impact of these changes is drawing scrutiny and calls for change, including lawsuits.
School Voucher Expansion Leads to “Eye Popping Numbers”
Legislative changes in to the state’s EdChoice Expansion Scholarship Program in Ohio’s 2023 budget means that every Ohio family, regardless of income or school district, is now eligible for financial aid to pay private school tuition. Advocates of school choice applauded these changes, including Robert Enlow, president and chief executive of EdChoice, a national pro-school voucher nonprofit.
“Ohio is one of the states taking the lead in universal school choice, he told Cleveland.com in November. “Other states are seeing a sea change in how we look at education and how we fund it going forward, and Ohio is on the tip of the spear for that.”
Critics of the program, including public school advocates, voiced their concerns during budget discussions and prior to the school year. They worried about negative impacts on public school funding that could affect the overall financial and social health of schools. They are now pointing to recent audit numbers that seem to support their argument.
Ohio Capital Journal reports that public school advocates saw “eye-popping increases in private school funding through vouchers that worry them almost as much as the foot-dragging that they believe has occurred when talking of public school funding.”
The Ohio Department of Education reported 23,272 participants in the voucher expansion for the 2023 fiscal year, up from the 20,702 reported in 2022 and even more from the year prior, when 17,155 students participated in the state-subsidized program.
This resulted in Ohio spending $15 million more for the expanded school voucher program this year than it had estimated, with costs expected to grow in the coming years.
The Ohio Legislative Services Commission initially estimated the EdChoice Voucher program would cost $397 million this fiscal year for the new vouchers, but data shows that the new program actually cost $412 million this year alone. In total, over 90,000 families applied to the school voucher program, when including renewals from previous years and the Cleveland Scholarship Program, costing more than $580 million, according to NPR news.
Critics Call Changes a “Perversion” of Voucher Intent
With the most recent state budget, passed this summer, a GOP-led effort to expand eligibility for private school vouchers led to a substantial increase in the poverty level allowed for the voucher program to household income of $135,000 or less for a family of four. Families with incomes above the $135,000 threshold can still be eligible for at least 10% of the maximum scholarship.
Stephen Dyer, former state representative and former chair of the Ohio House Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee for the House Finance Committee, conducted an audit of the most recent funds allocated.
He found that the changes led to more white, wealthy families were using vouchers, which he claims is a “perversion of the idea behind a voucher, which was sold as allowing poor students, students of color, students who haven’t traditionally had access to private schools, to have access,” Dyer said in an OCJ interview.
Dyer said ODE data showed nearly nine in 10 new applications to the voucher expansion went to white students, and more new vouchers for high schoolers went to families making more than $150,000 annually than went to families making less.
Calls for Accountability
Dyer is calling for an audit of the billions of dollars spent to subsidize private school vouchers in Ohio. “It’s all of our dollars, so we have a right to say what happens with all of our dollars, and we certainly have a right to audit where our dollars are going,” Dyer told Ohio Capital Journal.
Public school advocates worry that the gerrymandered Republican supermajority in both Ohio legislative bodies will prevent accountability in the voucher program and implementation of the Fair School Funding Plan. They filed a lawsuit in Jan. 2022 that accuses the state of Ohio of improperly and unequally funding private schools, specifically targeting the growth of the voucher program as a drain on public school resources.
“The legislature has only moved to further expand private school vouchers in Ohio,” the leading group in the lawsuit, Vouchers Hurt Ohio, wrote in a recent statement. “We do not stand a chance of changing their minds or direction so we are forced to sue to get a fair hearing in a court of law where the Ohio Constitution is respected and means something.”
