Critics slam Ohio’s new way to use public money for Christian schools

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP):

Around the United States, advocates for Christian education have been finding legal ways to tap taxpayer money used more typically for public schools. One new approach in Ohio is benefiting schools tied to a burgeoning conservative political group and facing objections from defenders of the separation of church and state.

In President-elect Donald Trump, backers of school choice have gained an ally in their efforts to share taxpayer money with families to pay for things like private school tuition. Trump has cast school choice as a way to counter what he calls leftist indoctrination in public classrooms and is expected to seek a boost for the movement at the federal level.

The Ohio case shows how governments can push the envelope to funnel money to private schools.

The state has put a small part of its budget surplus toward competitive grants for expanding and renovating religious schools. Most of the winning construction projects are associated with the Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based advocacy group that’s seen its revenues balloon amid the state’s push to expand religious educational options.

Ohio last year established a universal voucher programme that provides tuition to nonpublic schools, including religious ones, to any family in the state. Backers of the construction grants say they can help address a capacity problem created by the vouchers’ popularity, particularly in rural areas.

The nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State has objected to the capital investments in religious schools, calling the practice unconstitutional and unprecedented in scope. Where voucher programmes involve spending decisions made by individual parents, the group argues the new program involves the government paying the schools directly.

“The religious freedom of taxpayers is violated when their taxes are forcibly taken from them and devoted to religious instruction of a faith to which those taxpayers do not subscribe,” said Alex Luchenitser, the group’s associate legal director.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL

The One-Time Strategic Community Investment Fund originated in the Republican-led Ohio Senate.

Spokesperson John Fortney rejected the claim that helping religious schools directly is unconstitutional.

“This is laughable and a lie that the left is using to yet again vilify parents who send their students to a school of their choice,” the Senate GOP spokesperson said in a statement.

Around the country, expanded school choice programmes have benefited religious organizations seeking to increase their educational offerings. Of the 33 states with private school programmes, 12 allow any student to apply for public money to subsidise private, religious or homeschool education, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.

The CCV and its education policy arm, Ohio Christian Education Network, advocated for several years for Ohio’s primary voucher program, EdChoice, to apply to religious schools.

In an interview, Ohio Christian Education Network Executive Director Troy McIntosh said Ohio’s voucher expansion didn’t create new demand. It merely made the options families already wanted affordable. He said Ohio lawmakers had “a compelling interest” in addressing the capacity issue with the new construction grants.

“Parents who had children were paying taxes, but they were all going to schools that that parent would rather not be in,” he said.