More About Senate President’s Public Statements Regarding the EdChoice Voucher Litigation
Attached is the Vouchers Hurt Ohio (VHO) Tuesday morning message. The Senate President is downplaying the efficacy of the EdChoice voucher litigation by statements made to the Lima News. The initiation and ongoing thrust of the EdChoice voucher litigation is as serious as a heart attack. We are not playing political games. We are in this effort to win in the Court of law and the Court of public opinion.
Good Tuesday morning,
Let’s be perfectly clear about something.
We did not file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the harmful private school voucher program to give us leverage in negotiating with state lawmakers.
This is the foolishness that Senate President Matt Huffman from Lima is peddling because he cannot defend the program that is forcing homeowners and local taxpayers to pay more while hundreds of millions of state dollars are siphoned off for private, sectarian schools.
He recently told his hometown newspaper, the Lima News, that he doesn’t think the lawsuit has any merit.
That’s not what Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page believes. She gave the greenlight in December for harmful private school vouchers to go on trial in 2023.
Huffman huffed and puffed a little more with the Lima News:
“I think the people who filed it know that it has little merit and it’s really a legislative negotiating tactic, which is meaningless to me,” Huffman said.
We’re in court where facts matter and opinions are meaningless, and Huffman’s expansion of harmful private school vouchers is unconstitutional.
In the last budget, Huffman and lawmakers increased the private school vouchers for high school students to $7,500 and for K-12 to $5,550 per pupil while shortchanging the public school funding system.
Public schools doors are wide open to all students, and public schools educate 90 percent of the children in Ohio while receiving only 75 percent of the funding.
That means 10 percent of the students are receiving 25 percent of the funding. That’s wrong and we believe it is unconstitutional.
The Lima News didn’t only talk to Huffman.
Lima City Schools Superintendent Jill Ackermann said: “There should never be a separate and unequal system of schools, period.”
“We stand firm in our belief that this is legitimate,” Ackerman said.
“The Ohio Constitution is clear,” William L. Phillis, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding told the Lima News. “There shall be a single system of public schools, not a separate and unequal system of schools that can apply a discriminatory litmus test against students based on race, religion, income, or any disqualifying factor that strikes their fancy.”
Read the story here.
Sincerely,
Vouchers Hurt Ohio
Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation
VOUCHERS HURT OHIO