Proponents of Amendment 2 will tell you the measure is only to open the discussion around school choice. That is a lie.
It’s a lie because charter schools have been legal in Kentucky since the passage of HB 520 back in 2017. Since then, the legislative stumbling block has been creating a lawful mechanism to fund private schools with state dollars. Amendment 2 aims to create legal exceptions to seven sections of the Kentucky Constitution, including section 171 requiring taxes can only be collected for public purposes, section 184 prohibiting taxation for the funding of non-public schools, and section 189 which prohibits public education funding being used for religious schools. Don’t be misled – this amendment’s sole purpose is to create a pathway for funding private schools with public money.
Doubly alarming is that our existing charter school law contains language allowing funds from public schools to be diverted into schools governed by separate boards that can be unelected or even outsourced to private, for-profit companies. But the “taxation without representation” crowd doesn’t want you to know that.
Public schools are required to take all students regardless of race, religion, family income, physical or learning disability, and academic or athletic ability. Private schools aren’t. In the last two state budgets, funding for public schools has decreased about 6%, and the state’s SEEK formula is now funding schools 26% below the funding levels of 2008 when adjusted for inflation. Defunding public schools and shifting taxpayer dollars to exclusionary academies with little to no oversight will only serve to increase educational disparity within both poverty-stricken and rural communities in our state. As of 2022, Kentucky’s private school students had a household income 54.4% higher than the state average. School vouchers or “Educational Opportunity Accounts” like those previously struck down by the state’s Supreme Court would disproportionately benefit wealthier families.
To see the impact of “school choice,” one must look no further than our northern neighbor Ohio. On September 25, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed an emergency motion compelling Columbus City Schools to provide bus transportation for all non-public and parochial school students. The district already has to comply with a “30-minute rule” requiring it to bus any non-public school student to schools within a 30-minute drive of their normal assigned public school. In Daviess County, that would be like requiring OPS to bus students in the Estes district to Sorgho or East View Elementary.
Ohio also has a voucher program, EdChoice, that provides up to $6,166 in assistance for grades K-8, and $8,408 in assistance for grades 9-12. For the fiscal year ending June 2024, this voucher program cost Ohio taxpayers $966.2 million. As of 2023, Kentucky had an estimated 58,388 private school students and 39,534 homeschooled students. Splitting the difference of Ohio’s program and providing a $7k voucher to just these students would cost Kentucky taxpayers $685.4 million, equivalent to the yearly salary, benefit, and pension package for over 5,600 public school teachers and employees.
In July, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy released a brief on the potential financial impact of a voucher program in Kentucky. It highlighted the ballooning costs of school choice/voucher programs in several states, including Florida where spending on these initiatives is expected to eat 30% of the state education budget this year. If similar levels of redirection were applied to Kentucky, Owensboro Public Schools would lose nearly $10 million in state funding and Daviess County Public Schools would lose nearly $20 million.
The hard truth is those shortfalls will have to be accounted for with additional money. It will lead to tax increases, and possibly additional taxing districts in the event new private or charter schools are constructed. It will further widen the gap between educational haves and have-nots, and line the pockets of the politically connected. On November 5, please vote “No” on Amendment 2.
Written by,
David Norris
Coalition for an Inclusive Daviess County
