Local educators oppose voucher expansion

VW independent/submitted information

CONVOY — A Crestview Middle School teacher has organized a letter-writing and petition campaign in opposition to a planned expansion of the state’s EdChoice Voucher program being discussed in Columbus.

Eighth-grade teacher James Lautzenheiser has sent copies of a letter to the editor he wrote to The Van Wert independent and other local media in opposition to House Bill 166, which calls for expanding vouchers in grades 7-12.

“This type of budget expansion places an increasing financial burden on public school districts at a time period with capped financial support from the State of Ohio,” Lautzenheiser noted in a petition he sent to the Ohio General Assembly on the issue.

Lautzenheiser said the program would use old data to assess school performance, a process that could open up voucher eligibility in school districts that “demonstrate consistent improvement and success for their students over the past two school years”.

The problem with the state school voucher program is that it has gotten away from its original purpose, which was to provide students who could not afford an option to escape from low-performing public schools a choice to improve their educational path.

However, Lautzenheiser has noted that, with the use of old and unreliable “Value Added” data, the new legislation could make up to 70 percent of public schools eligible for the EdChoice Voucher program, which would take needed financial resources away from public schools that are already dealing with little or no increase in state education funding.

Lautzenheiser said that new student “scholarship” vouchers would range between $4,000-6,000 per student, and schools could not be removed from this extensive list of eligibility once they were initially listed — even if new State Report Card data demonstrates the school has substantially improved.

In a letter to the editor, the Crestview teacher also noted that the Ohio General Assembly has already frozen educational financial resources per district (foundation aid) for the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years. 

“An unwise and overwhelming expansion of EdChoice voucher eligibility would place incredible financial burdens on public school districts at a time where statewide budget support is already capped for the foreseeable future,” he wrote.  

Local educators have already set up a meeting with State Senator Rob McColley and State Representative Craig Riedel for February 10 on the issue, but Lautzenheiser has noted that, with legislative action possible as soon as February 1, all of the Van Wert County school districts have joined with the Western Buckeye Educational Service Center on ways to provide legislators with their viewpoints on the pending measure.