Board of Education Opposes State Voucher Bill

Changes announced this week to a controversial state bill expanding the use of taxpayer-subsidized scholarships for students to attend private and parochial schools were not enough to win over the .

“The district is still opposed to any diversion of local taxpayer dollars to fund any private school program,” Treasurer/Chief Fiscal Officer Kent Zeman said.

Last week, the board joined more than half of Ohio’s 614 school districts in formally opposing House Bill 136, the Parental Choice and Taxpayer Savings Scholarship Program.

“In its current state, we certainly disagree with the premise of the bill,” said Board President Kevin Romanchok.

The bill would have allowed any child whose family earns $95,000 a year or less – eventually even those who were already attending a private school before the proposal – to apply for a voucher to cover tuition, up to $4,600, at a private school of their choice.

To pay for the expansion, the state would have deducted $5,700 from the district for every student receiving the voucher.

Zeman said 743 children living in Avon already attend private schools, and if 577 children qualified for the voucher under the former guidelines, the district would have lost all of its $3.29 million in state funding.

After a huge blowback from public school officials across the state, State Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, announced Monday he would be changing the bill, which was voted out of committee in September, to limit the financial losses to school districts.

The changes include:

• Capping the number of vouchers to 1 percent of each district’s total enrollment;

• Lowering the income requirement to 300 percent of the federal poverty guideline – about $67,000 for a family of 4;

• Allowing the vouchers to only be worth as much as the per-student state funding the district receives.

has about 4,025 students, and if the maximum number of vouchers were issued for the district, the school could lose about $29,503 in funding – a little less than an Ohio teacher’s average starting salary of $33,671, according to Teacher Portal.

That would be in addition to the more than under Gov. John Kasich’s budget the district is already facing over the next 2 years.

Zeman said the money lost from the program could require the district to pursue a levy.

“That’s local tax money that these residents voted to support our public schools that’s being diverted into private, for-profit schools,” Zeman said. “Until these comments are part of an amended bill, the position of the Avon Local School District remains the same.”