Rural Hardin County schools join voucher lawsuit

KENTON — Hardin County superintendents fear Ohio’s next budget crisis will force lawmakers to choose between funding public schools and the state’s private-school voucher system.

The county’s six public school districts — Ada, Kenton, Hardin Northern, Upper Scioto, Ridgemont and Riverdale — came together earlier this year to join the coalition of public schools suing the EdChoice voucher program.

Ohio is expected to spend nearly $1 billion on private school vouchers for the 2023-24 school year now that all Ohio children are eligible, regardless of income.

Few of those children come from Hardin County, where there are no private schools.

The closest alternative is Calvary Christian School, located 22 miles from Kenton in neighboring Logan County.

“It would lead somebody to say, ‘Well, what’s the big concern?’” said Chad Thrush, superintendent of Kenton schools, where fewer than 10 children used vouchers last school year.

“The concern is the future of education. … What happens when we hit an economic recession?”

‘We believe it makes our case stronger’

Ohio’s voucher system started in 1997 with the Cleveland scholarship, which provided publicly funded scholarships so parents whose children attended struggling Cleveland schools could send their children to private school.

Lawmakers created the EdChoice scholarship several years later, extending scholarships or vouchers to students in other poor performing schools.

Lawmakers continued expanding the voucher system, creating new scholarships for children with autism and disabilities and creating an income-based version of EdChoice.

The General Assembly’s final expansion came last summer, when lawmakers decided to make EdChoice universal, though families earning more than 450% of the federal poverty level do not receive the full scholarship.

“We believe it made our case even stronger,” said Dennis Willard, a spokesperson for the Ohio Coalition of Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of several public schools in 2022.

‘Separate and unequal’

While the original plaintiffs were all urban schools long subject to the voucher program, hundreds of other school districts including suburban and rural schools have since joined the coalition or provided financial support for the lawsuit.

The coalition, which successfully sued the state for underfunding public schools in 1991, argues the voucher program is creating a “separate and unequal system of schools for the wealthy” that “comes at the expense of underfunded public schools,” Willard said.

The lawsuit relies on Ohio’s constitutional provision for a “thorough and efficient system of common schools,” which prohibits religious sects from “exclusive right” or control of public-school funds.

The coalition argues private schools can choose students based on characteristics like race, religion, academic ability, disability or family income too. “The real choice in the matter is the private school operator,” Willard said.

‘Why are so few kids choosing to attend?’

Voucher supporters point to previous court cases like the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which upheld Ohio’s Cleveland scholarship, which found that parents controlled the scholarships and could choose between secular and religious schools.

“They have no evidence that the EdChoice program has any negative impact on public schools,” said Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network, which is working to start private schools in urban and rural areas where there are few options outside the public schools.

“The public schools will continue to get funded for every student who chooses to attend,” McIntosh said. “The only way that their revenue is going to decrease significantly is if fewer and fewer kids choose to attend, but then the proper question isn’t, ‘Why are we underfunding our public schools?’ The proper question at that point is why are so few kids choosing to attend?”

‘Accountable for every cent’

“It seems like an attack on pubic schools,” said Andrew Cano, superintendent of Hardin Northern schools, “and defunding the public schools only helps to make them look a little less successful, that they’re not the best choice.”

Public schools are subject to routine audits, teacher evaluations, standardized testing and other transparency measures not applicable to private schools, Cano and Thrush said. And their schools receive less per pupil funding from the state — Hardin County superintendents estimate their schools get an average of $5,000 per high school student — than private schools that accept EdChoice, which as much as $8,400 per high school student.

“We’re accountable for every cent,” Thrush said. “We’re audited every year. All of our records are open for public inspection, but with private institutions that’s not the case.”