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Proponents of Amendment 2 are having trouble convincing Kentuckians to change the constitution so tax dollars can be taken from public schools, where 90% of kids attend, and given to private education. So they are making claims that are untrue, and hoping voters won’t figure it out.
An obvious falsehood is that the amendment won’t lead to major public dollars being diverted to private school vouchers. That’s like ordering an elaborate restaurant dinner and saying you don’t plan to eat it. The whole purpose of Amendment 2 is to allow what’s now unconstitutional: “provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common (public) schools.” The amendment would overturn seven sections of the constitution to make the widest use of vouchers possible. And it’s deliberately written with no guardrails on who benefits and how much is spent.
A glance at what’s happening around the country suggests why. In just two years’ time, vouchers available to nearly every person, no matter how wealthy, became the law in 12 states that lack the constitutional protections now at risk here. And look at the states that Amendment 2 proponents tout as models. Florida and Arizona are busting their state budgets with voucher costs, with Florida spending $4 billion annually and Arizona $1.1 billion. Amendment 2 would give Frankfort politicians a blank check to follow suit.
Vouchers are the priority, and don’t be fooled by state workarounds like running them through the tax code, putting voucher money into an account, or obscuring them with a new name. All these programs are vouchers because they use public dollars for private education. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know what it is.
Because the reality of what proponents want is controversial, they are now claiming Amendment 2 will do the opposite of its purpose. Kentuckians are being inundated with mailers and commercials claiming the amendment will increase public school funding and even raise teacher pay. Both claims are absurd and false.
States with private school vouchers spent $900 less per pupil than states without them in 2007, an amount that swelled to $2,800 less by 2021. And average teacher pay is over $5,000 a year lower in states with voucher programs and $8,000 lower in states with universal vouchers.
New voucher programs will inevitably take money from Kentucky’s public schools. That will harm the vast majority of students who will remain in public education. Vouchers will particularly hurt rural areas that lack private schools and rely more on state education dollars because of low local property wealth. And the winners will be families already in private school, who typically receive around 70% of vouchers. In Kentucky, most private schools are in just 3 counties, and incomes in private school households are $52,000 higher on average than public school families.
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy report shows what the impact will be based precisely on what seven similar states are already doing today: Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida. A program smaller than all those states would cost $199 million in Kentucky, the equivalent of funding 1,645 public school teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other personnel. A program to the scale of Arizona would cost $597 million, equivalent to paying 4,934 educators. And a Florida-scale model would cost Kentucky $1.2 billion, or the amount it costs to keep 9,869 public school employees.
As those dollars are diverted from public to private education, school districts stand to lose substantial needed revenue. Letcher County could see 22% of its budget disappear from a Florida-scale voucher program, while Shelby County could lose 12%. Districts are already facing funding challenges from nearly 20 years of eroding state budgets that have led directly to a teacher and bus driver shortage. The funding gap between wealthy and poor school districts is now at the level declared unconstitutional in the 1980s.
There is a better way. For the same cost as vouchers, Kentucky could invest in strategies that work in our public schools, including reduced class sizes, funding for universal preschool, and higher teacher pay.
It’s important that Kentuckians be clear about the choice in front of them this November. Amendment 2 will completely overturn Kentucky’s longstanding constitutional commitment to public education. And it will divert dollars all communities now depend on to unaccountable private education for the few.
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Tom Shelton is the former superintendent of both of Daviess County Public Schools and Fayette County Public Schools. He is also a Certified Public Accountant who serves as Executive Secretary of the Council for Better Education and holds a PhD in Educational Leadership and Organizational Development. This commentary originally appeared on Link NKY.
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