Dive Brief:
- An Ohio school choice program that has expanded significantly since its origins in the late 1990s and early 2000s is now in violation of Ohio's constitution, which requires a singular "thorough and efficient system of common schools" in the state, the state’s 10th District Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.
- The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel found the state’s EdChoice and related programs are "undermining the financial integrity of public schools." In its ruling, the court said the program "is cherry-picking” students from public schools who are inexpensive to educate while leaving the students who need more resources for public schools.
- The judges said the program is also "slowly eroding support for local school levies" by incentivizing families to leave public schools through means such as reducing or eliminating the cost of private schools, which takes a toll on public school enrollment and finances.
Dive Insight:
The lawsuit, Columbus City School District, et al. v. State of Ohio, was filed by a coalition of school districts in 2022.
"The EdChoice Scholarship Program poses an existential threat to Ohio’s public school system," the coalition stated in their original complaint. "Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio’s public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio’s foundation funding — the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio’s public schools — otherwise available to already struggling school districts for the education of their students."
The 10th District Court panel, which examined fiscal data, agreed in its Thursday decision. Had the state EdChoice program not been funded in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the state's public school funding plan could have been fully funded, the judges said.
In fiscal years 2023 and 2024, public schools received only 50% and 66% of the Fair School Funding Plan, a bipartisan multiyear state funding plan, respectively.
Overall, in fiscal year 2024, public schools received only $7.1 billion compared to the $7.8 billion they would have received if fully funded — a difference of approximately the same amount used to fund the school choice program, the judges said.
In fiscal years 2024 and 2025, the school choice program cost taxpayers almost $1.4 billion, according to the opinion.
Judges clarified, however, that not all forms of school vouchers violate the state's constitution, and their decision is limited to how the state's EdChoice and related programs are currently structured and funded.
The scathing decision comes as the U.S. is set to launch its first nationwide federal school choice program, which provides taxpayers a credit if they donate to scholarship-granting organizations that distribute funds for families to use on expenses for public and private — including religious — schools.
Ohio has opted into that program, which begins in 2027.
The controversial federal program is expected to provide an estimated $26 billion in taxpayer contributions annually for education expenses.
