Sun 1/19 @ 9AM
The next in the “Forums That Matter” series at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cleveland is called “School Vouchers: What’s the Effect on Public Education?” And this is a topic about which Ohio citizens, voters and taxpayers — especially parents — should be alarmed. The expansion of school vouchers, under the benign-seeming name of “school choice,” is in fact part of a scheme to wreck public education that’s being enacted across the country, taking away money from the public schools attended by nearly 90% of Ohio’s children to redirect it in the form of vouchers to wealthy families to defray some of the cost of sending their kids to exclusive private schools the average Ohio kid would never be admitted to. So that “choice” was not really available to most.
Once sold as a way for lower-income families to get their kids out of failing schools (one might well ask why those schools weren’t given resources to improve for all the kids left behind), they were expanded in 2023 to make even higher income families eligible — and there was no requirement that the kids ever attended a public school and found it wanting, with the funds coming at the expense of the schools they never set foot in. Now nearly $1 billion of state education money is going to his small subset of mostly affluent and privileged Ohio students — and it’s likely to grow.
Speakers will include Cleveland Heights-University Heights school board member and Chardon teacher Dan Heintz, who is also a member of the steering committee of the Vouchers Hurt Ohio coalition, with other speaker(s) TBD.
It’s free and open to all.
uucleveland.org/community-forums/
Shaker Heights, OH 44122