Indiana and Ohio give tax-funded vouchers to just about anybody, regardless of income, so the vast majority of voucher money is enriching families whose children already attend private church schools, writes columnist John Schaaf.?(Getty Images)

Many Kentucky churches are losing members and money, but they’re hoping taxpayers will vote to bail them out of their financial problems.

Church lobbyists pushed Amendment 2 onto the November ballot, and if their scheme passes, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars will flow into questionable religious schools operated in church basements across the commonwealth.?

Judging by what’s happening in other states, Kentucky would likely pay churches at least $8,000 in public money for each child in their schools, but many of the “teachers” in the schools will be untrained volunteers recruited from church congregations.??

Unfortunately, the schools will have no accountability when those “teachers” fail to teach and students fail to learn.

Paul Prather, the insightful writer who is pastor of Bethesda Church in Montgomery County, recently discussed data showing that only about 5% of Americans regularly attend church. (“Regularly” means attending services at least three out of four weeks.)

As in the rest of the country, few Kentuckians regularly attend church, and even fewer put their children in church schools. However, if Amendment 2 passes, politicians will force every Kentucky taxpayer to pay for two school systems — one public, and one consisting of schools run by Baptist and Catholic churches.

The churches, which pay no taxes to anybody, will use taxpayer dollars to teach their religious doctrine to students they choose to allow into their schools.??

That’s right — the “school choice” behind Amendment 2 belongs to the church schools, which can choose the children they want and reject the ones they don’t want.??

Even worse, a church school could accept a child’s voucher money, then for reasons real or contrived, they could kick the child out a month or two into the school year and keep the tax dollars they already collected.?

Sadly, there are examples of this failed voucher scheme across the river in Indiana and Ohio, and in other states like Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.??

Indiana and Ohio give tax-funded vouchers to just about anybody, regardless of income, so the vast majority of voucher money is enriching well-off families whose children already attend church schools.?

In the 2023-24 school year, Indiana paid $439 million in tax dollars to private schools, with church schools grabbing 98 percent of that amount, and almost 70 percent of it paid for students who previously attended private school without a voucher.?

Like Indiana, Ohio’s spending on private schools grew dramatically after politicians opened the voucher program to everybody, regardless of income. In just four years, overall spending on vouchers nearly doubled, going from $557.5 million to a projected $1.05 billion in FY 2025, and close to 100 percent of the money goes to church schools.?

Arizona opened its taxpayer-funded voucher program to everybody in 2022, helping create a $1.4 billion budget hole that caused severe cuts for state universities and cancellation of road projects, school construction and water infrastructure projects.??

As in the other states, more than 70% of Arizona voucher recipients were already enrolled in private schools (90 percent in church schools) and had been paying for it without a handout from taxpayers.

Florida spends really big on vouchers —? $3 billion in the 2023-24 school year, with 82% of voucher recipients attending a church school.

In Wisconsin this year, taxpayers will pay $12,731 for each voucher student in grades 9-12, and 96% of the money goes to church schools.?

With politicians diverting more than $700 million per year to private schools, Wisconsin’s local school districts are frequently forced to ask residents to raise their property taxes to make up for lost state contributions.

Kentucky voters should consider these examples of taxpayer dollars flowing into unaccountable and mediocre church schools when deciding Amendment 2.

If voters approve Amendment 2 to Kentucky's Constitution the state for the first time would be allowed to send public money to private schools. Donors on both sides of the issue recently filed campaign finance reports. (Getty Images)

A few? weeks ago at the Capitol in Frankfort, a lobbying group called EdChoice Kentucky, Inc. organized a rally in favor of changing the state’s Constitution to funnel taxpayer money into private religious schools.??

Most of the people who showed up were students from Catholic and Christian schools who were bused in for the occasion. They were there to support lobbyists’ efforts to force all Kentuckians to pay tuition and expenses for students like them who are already attending private schools.

Sadly, most taxpayers were probably at work and couldn’t attend the rally to hear EdChoice’s Moe Lundrigan tout his dream for a huge and costly expansion of state government: vouchers paid for by every Kentuckian, with the voucher money flowing into the pockets of out-of-state corporate big shots and churches from the ’hood to the holler.

In a strange twist, Lundrigan argued that Kentucky should follow Indiana and Ohio in handing out massive financial subsidies to private schools. Ironically, Lundrigan’s urging comes at a time when research is showing vouchers fail to improve academic performance in the very states Lundrigan is touting.

Nearly every Indiana student is eligible for vouchers and Hoosier taxpayers are spending $1.136 billion in this budget cycle to pay private school tuition.??

Unfortunately for voucher recipients and those who claim that private schools are somehow better than public schools, researchers at the University of Notre Dame studied Indiana’s costly voucher program and determined that students using vouchers were not keeping up academically with public school students.??

According to the researchers, Indiana voucher students experienced an achievement loss in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with students who remained in public school. That loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English and other language arts, the researchers did not observe any “statistically meaningful” effects for voucher recipients.

In other words, hundreds of millions of Indiana tax dollars are annually thrown at private schools that duplicate the mission of the public schools taxpayers already support, but the duplicate schools aren’t as effective as the well-established public schools.

Then there’s Ohio: different state, same sad story, as taxpayer dollars are wasted on private schools that fail to improve academics, and can actually be detrimental to students. ?A study published by the Fordham Institute states, “The (Ohio) students who used vouchers to attend private schools fared worse on state exams compared to their closely matched peers remaining in public schools.”

Tragically, these are not one-off stories, but part of a growing consensus in research on mediocre academic performance in taxpayer-funded private schools. A study of Louisiana’s voucher program failure may show the worst academic non-performance.

Published in the ?American Economic Journal, the Louisiana study found that participation in the voucher plan “lowers math scores . . . and also reduces achievement in reading, science, and social studies.”?

Education and economic research into the impact of tax-funded vouchers is showing that the programs are not working. Private school lobbyists who promised pie-in-the-sky improvements have over-promised, private schools are underperforming, and taxpayers are being cheated.

Kentucky’s strong constitutional language has protected taxpayers from lobbyists who want dollars taken from working Kentuckians and diverted to church and business-run schools that would be unaccountable for their poor performance.??

Without accountability, it takes years for families to realize that voucher schools failed to give their children a quality education. Kentucky should not let lobbyists lead the state into the same dismal academic and financial swamp that Indiana and Ohio are wallowing in.??

(Photo by imagedepotpro via Getty Images)

Like salmon swimming home to spawn, lobbyists are again roaming the hallways of the Kentucky State Capitol.??

This year, big-dollar lobbyists representing corporate-run private schools and churches are pushing House Bill 208 to change the state’s constitution to allow politicians to throw billions of tax dollars into private and religious schools.??

The bad news is, other states are trying this risky experiment and it’s busting their budgets and turning into welfare for wealthy people and churches.

For example, Indiana’s government is forcing every taxpayer to pay for private schools, and pandering Hoosier politicians are diverting $500 million dollars a year into vouchers.? Ninety-nine percent of that voucher money is going to religious schools.?

So, if private school lobbyists in Frankfort have their way, every time a Kentuckian buys a toaster, a Big Mac, or a Ford or Toyota, a portion of the sales tax will go to church-based schools, which generally pay NO taxes and want a public handout to shore up dwindling revenue.

Indiana is a tragic example of a state that started a voucher program aimed at low-income families, but now gives vouchers worth about $6,000 per child to families with incomes up to $220,000 per year.? Most voucher recipients were already attending private schools before government swooped in and forced taxpayers to cover those costs.

Likewise, Florida now offers taxpayer-funded $8,000 private school vouchers to every school-aged kid, regardless of family income.???

When it was signed into law last year, it was estimated that Florida’s “vouchers for everybody” would cost between $200 and $700 million a year.? However, once this school year started with everybody eligible, the cost exploded, and is now estimated at between $2.8 and $4.2 billion, and about 70 percent of the new recipients were already attending private schools before vouchers.

As a gift (and re-election tool) from Florida politicians, individual voucher recipients can now spend taxpayer money on “instructional materials” such as theme park tickets, 55-inch TVs, video game consoles, skateboards, foosball tables and surfboards.?

Meanwhile, Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, and has about 12,000 teacher and support staff vacancies in its traditional public schools.

Another lobbyist-created disaster is looming in Arizona, where that state’s voucher program is estimated to cost taxpayers over $943 million in the current school year (creating a $319 million deficit for the 2024 fiscal year), and more than 53 percent of all new education spending is going to only eight percent of Arizona students.

In Arizona and other states where taxpayer vouchers are being spread around like manure on a pig farm, there’s minimal accountability or transparency for the use of taxpayer money in private schools.? There’s little or no auditing of private school finances, testing of students, standards for teachers, or parental rights as there are in public schools.

That’s because private school lobbyists pushed through legislation in those states that creates a shocking transfer of taxpayer money to churches and corporations that operate schools without rules — many hastily created, fly-by-night operations that can reject or dismiss any student they don’t want, or close without notice, leaving families in the lurch.

“We know that academic instability, bouncing around between schools, school closures, are really bad for children,” said Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University researcher who’s studied the impact of vouchers on students.? “The last four voucher evaluations have shown test score drops from kids who moved from public to private school that are on par with what Hurricane Katrina did to learning rates in New Orleans — and more recently what Covid-19 did to test scores after exams began to resume.”

The Kentucky Constitution protects taxpayers from the high-risk experiment of taxpayer-funded school vouchers. House Bill 208 would change that and allow politicians to gamble with Kentuckians’ hard-earned money.

A Franklin Circuit judge has declared a charter school law enacted by the legislature in 2022 unconstitutional. (Getty Images)

If you’re tired of endless political ads on television, radio and social media, just wait until next year when corporate lobbyists try to grab Kentucky tax dollars for privately-run charter schools.

After years of defeats in the Kentucky Supreme Court, lobbyists and private school operators will attempt to push a radical constitutional amendment onto the 2024 ballot.?

For over 100 years, the Kentucky Constitution has protected taxpayers by prohibiting state government from spending public money on private schools.??

Unfortunately, out of state corporations and dark money political organizations are spending big bucks on campaign contributions and lobbyists to push for a change in the state Constitution to allow billions of tax dollars to flow into private schools operated by those corporations.

Earlier this year, the lobbyists made a trial run in the General Assembly with House Bill 174, which would’ve put the constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot. It didn’t pass, but it will be back in January.??

The amendment would allow politicians to spend state tax money to pay for the education of students who are not in public schools.?

If the amendment’s adopted next year, Kentuckians will see a large chunk of their sales and income tax payments taken from public education and funneled into private schools.??

Unlike public schools, these corporate schools are not accountable to locally elected school boards. Instead, they answer to hedge funds and other Wall Street investors who demand maximum profits from the schools.?????

Nationwide, those corporations and their dark money front groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to create the illusion that taxpayers should pay for schools that compete with traditional public and private schools.?

In Frankfort, corporate school lobbyists want private operators to get a foot in the door and a hand in the pocket of Kentucky taxpayers.

When government throws public money at private schools, it comes at the expense of Kentucky’s public schools, which are the heart of communities across the state.??

In every Kentucky community, public schools employ teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, coaches, counselors, maintenance workers and principals. And schools spend locally to maintain buildings, buses, cafeterias, chemistry labs, athletic facilities and libraries.

Students, families, friends, and businesses throughout Kentucky support and attend school activities such as sports events, science fairs, school plays, and music shows.

If public schools lose state support, the burden of paying for the schools will increasingly fall on local school boards, which will be forced to substantially raise school taxes just to keep schools open.??

There will be deep cuts, because local taxes won’t be enough to make up for the loss of state dollars. Employees will lose jobs, and activities such as basketball, football, other sports teams, marching bands, drama and art classes, and libraries will have to go.??

In other states, the types of voucher programs or “charter schools” that these lobbyists want in Kentucky have been hugely unsuccessful in their stated goal of “improving education.” Typically, the programs benefit wealthy families in heavily populated areas by helping them pay for private schools their children are already attending.

In less populated areas, private school operators may open experimental schools with poorly paid and unqualified teachers.??

Once opened, it’s hard to stop the substandard “education” offered in these for-profit schools, until many students have wasted valuable years not learning as much as students in well-established public and private schools. Meanwhile, taxpayers are ripped off because they’re paying for unnecessary duplication.?

When the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a rigorous study of charter school performance, the study found that charter schools have no overall positive effect on education.??

School privatization wastes tax money and fails, even though charter schools can select their students, while public schools are open to all children in the community. Even with selective enrollment, charter schools don’t do any better, and sometimes are far worse than public schools.??

It makes a lot more sense to focus public resources on every community’s public schools to lower class size, pay teachers enough to hire and retain experienced educators, and provide academic and extracurricular activities.

For Kentucky to compete with other states for good-paying jobs in fields like aerospace, automotive, health care, logistics and advanced manufacturing, Kentucky has to offer a quality education. Job creators who need educated employees will not be impressed by experimental schools operated by for-profit businesses.

George Russell’s Peace Corps Group getting ready to go to Chile in 1964. George is seventh from the left. (Photo provided)

George Russell, who died recently, was a champion of free and fair elections
in Kentucky and around the world.

His work and that of his colleagues across the globe for democracy and?freedom will always prevail against those who make false allegations about election?fraud or try to suppress the voting rights of their fellow citizens.

George spent decades in Kentucky and many foreign countries making sure?elections were safe and every vote was properly counted. Today, when a losing
candidate says an election was “rigged” or claims there was “manipulation” of?ballots or voting machines, remember that there are thousands of Americans like?George, working diligently to guarantee that doesn’t happen.

In his career, George worked with the Kentucky Board of Elections as?executive director and later as a long-time board member. He was a trusted adviser
to public officials from governor and U.S. senator to county clerks all over Kentucky.
In addition, he monitored elections in 19 countries for the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization, and includes 57?nations that span the globe, encompassing three continents — North America,
Europe, and Asia — and more than a billion people.

As a long-term OSCE election observer, George was sometimes the sole?representative of the United States on international teams monitoring elections?around the world – from Albania to Kazakhstan, and from Cambodia to El Salvador?to Malawi.

Because of his outstanding election work at home and abroad, the National?Association of Secretaries of State selected George 20 years ago to receive the
Freedom Award. Upon accepting the award, George said “One of the greatest things?we can do is export democracy.”

George’s dedication to democracy and freedom started in the 1960s, when he?answered President John F. Kennedy’s call to public service by working as a Peace?Corps volunteer in Chile for two years.

When Kennedy created the Peace Corps, he said: “Life in the Peace Corps will?not be easy . . . but it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who?participates in the Peace Corps — who works in a foreign land — will know that he or?she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life?which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.”

A couple of months ago, after returning from Israel and Jordan, George said he?had visited 78 countries, some for his election work and others purely for the?adventure. ?Upon his passing, friends from around Kentucky and the world deluged?his Facebook page with comments honoring George’s life and work.

George’s professional work was vital for effective elections in Kentucky, and?his volunteer work was vital to young democracies around the world.

He was an?outstanding public servant who was also dedicated to many organizations in his?community. When help was needed, George was always there.

As his obituary notes, George was a unique and adventurous spirit. When we?lose somebody like him, it’s important for the rest of us to fill the void by stepping?up and doing what we can for others in our community, our state, our nation and?the world.