If Amendment 2 passes, Kentucky would waste taxpayer dollars on religious schools
The Republican-sponsored amendment would decimate public schools in order to fund religious indoctrination
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This November, voters in Kentucky will get to decide if they want to decimate their public school system and funnel millions of dollars to religious indoctrination centers.
That’s the possibility of Amendment 2, a potential change to the Kentucky Constitution, which asks this yes or no question:
To give parents choices in educational opportunities for their children, are you in favor of enabling the General Assembly to provide financial support for the education costs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade who are outside the system of common (public) schools by amending the Constitution of Kentucky as stated below?
IT IS PROPOSED THAT A NEW SECTION BE ADDED TO THE CONSTITUTION OF KENTUCKY TO READ AS FOLLOWS:
The General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools. The General Assembly may exercise this authority by law, Sections 59, 60, 171, 183, 184, 186, and 189 of this Constitution notwithstanding.
By using the euphemistic language of school choice, the proposal would create a voucher system allowing taxpayer dollars to flow to private schools. Most of those private schools are religious schools, and most of those religious schools are Christian schools, and most of those Christian schools are attended by families that would attend them even without the tuition assistance.
Right now, Kentucky is one of the states that doesn’t have a voucher program. But as the Washington Post reported in June, the amount of money some states are giving to private religious schools is incredible: In just five states, more than 700,000 students received taxpayer-funded “vouchers.” Overall, billions of dollars are supporting these programs—up to $16,000 per student per year in some cases.
We already know how spending that kind of cash would blow a hole in the Kentucky budget and destroy the public school system:
The new report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy (KyPolicy) estimates that if Kentucky were to adopt an educational voucher system like Florida’s, it would cost Kentucky $1.19 billion annually, enough to pay for nearly 10,000 public school teachers and employees. Florida’s voucher system is the largest of its kind.
The think tank also analyzed a smaller model, comparable to states like Arizona, and found it would cost Kentucky $199 million annually. That’s about 1,650 Kentucky public school employees.
That’s a one billion dollar difference depending on which way Kentucky Republicans go, and they haven’t said which path they’d take. (They’re purposely avoiding details because that discussion is moot unless Amendment 2 passes.) What we do know, according to Jason Bailey, the executive director of KyPolicy and an author of that report, is that “Amendment 2 would provide a blank check to the legislature to allow them to fund private schools for the first time.”
It would also disproportionately hurt rural Kentucky:
… a voucher system could disproportionately impact poorer rural counties where property values are low and therefore generate less property tax revenue for schools than in districts with more valuable real estate, KyPolicy found.
The more rural a community, the more it relies on state funding to support its schools. If that already-limited funding were to go to private schools, the educational system would only get worse.
It could also create additional problems. If more parents decided to homeschool their kids, knowing they would receive thousands of dollars per child per year to do so, that would mean less oversight into what education, if any, those kids are receiving. Kentucky’s laws regarding what parents are required to do if they choose this option are famously lax.
There’s also a potential loophole that would allow religious schools to pocket the money without providing any instruction at all, as explained by retired attorney John Schaaf in an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader:
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.
Schaaf also points out that in neighboring Indiana, lawmakers gave $439 million to private schools, “with church schools grabbing 98 percent of that amount.”
As the Washington Post explained, taxpayers in more than half the country are now funding Creationism, homophobia, anti-transgender misinformation, and Sunday School nonsense masquerading as actual history and science. Kentucky may soon join their ranks.
Taxpayer dollars should never be used to prop up religion. Instead of giving money directly to churches, conservatives have figured out a way to give it to religious schools while destroying legal precedent along the way.
Amendment 2 won’t make life better for students in desperate need of a good education because these laws aren’t meant for them. Vouchers are nothing more than gifts for rich people who don’t need the financial help and religious schools that aren’t popular enough to exist on their own. More than anything, they hurt public schools, and when public schools struggle, it has a ripple effect throughout their communities. (And after making public schools worse, conservatives will then use that to justify even more money going to private schools.)
The people who live in religious bubbles don’t care about life on the outside. They’re willing to let others suffer in the long-term as long as they can benefit in the short-term. As I reported just two weeks ago, one Florida pastor is urging his colleagues to launch their own church-based schools specifically so they can get money from the taxpayer-funded coffers. Providing kids with a quality education is not their priority.
A state’s education funds belong in public schools, not church basements.
So far, Kentucky’s courts have struck down any attempt to finance private schools with public money because the state constitution forbids it. The same laws have prevented taxpayer dollars from funding charter schools, vouchers, and tuition reimbursements for private schools. The only reason Amendment 2 is being considered is because Republicans want to remove that obstacle—and they’re hoping voters are on their side, perhaps confused by the language of choice and the promise of a better education. They shouldn’t be deceived by that lie.
For now, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear (who couldn’t stop Amendment 2 from appearing on the ballot) has vocally opposed it, and not a single elected Democrat supported the bill. They’re all urging Kentuckians to vote “NO” on the proposal.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
It is lost on a lot of people that the majority of students in many states have little to no access to private schools, or there is a private religious school parents do not want their children attending. Every dollar given to private schools, religious or otherwise, is a dollar taken away from public schools that are likely under-funded to begin with. At the end of the day, Republicans hate public education.
Mandatory:
Tax the damned churches, already. They want taxpayer dollars? Then they have to pay to play.