In Ohio, one Christian group is using tax dollars to fuel a network of private schools
The Center for Christian Virtue is destroying public education in Ohio through taxpayer-funded scholarships and grants
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A Christian advocacy organization is working with Republican lawmakers in Ohio to steer millions of dollars in public funding to construct new private schools that will siphon money out of the education system. We knew this was happening months ago but a new report from the Associated Press adds important details to the religious scheme.
Ohio lawmakers have already taken full advantage of their gerrymandered state to waste nearly a billion dollars on school vouchers in a single year. That money lets students use taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of private school (often Christian school) tuition.
But apparently that’s not enough.
Back in September, ProPublica’s Eli Hager reported that millions of dollars were being used to cover construction costs for religious schools. That money helped “renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.”
How did that even happen? The short answer was that when lawmakers passed their massive multi-billion-dollar appropriations bill earlier this year—a bill so large that most politicians don’t have the ability or desire to nitpick every item in it—it included over $4 million in grants to private schools. A lot of that money was intended to go to Christian schools across the state in order to help them accept more students… who were using taxpayer-funded vouchers. (One grift fueled another.)
The idea came directly from a right-wing advocacy group affiliated with Americans for Prosperity, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. The group said in April that lawmakers should use money from the “One-Time Strategic Community Investments Fund” to pay for private school improvements under the guise of “capital projects.” Republicans got the memo and put it into practice.
The grant recipients, as listed in the official document, included:
Temple Christian School Building Expansion ($250,000)
Saint Edwards High School Sustainable Urban Agriculture ($800,000) (It’s actually “St. Edward” but who’s keeping track?)
St. Mary School Playground Enhancements ($4,000)
Bellefontaine Calvary Christian School ($250,000)
Mansfield Christian School Improvements ($1,500,000)
Holy Trinity Orthodox Christian Academy and Preschool ($1,000,000)
Victory Christian School Renovation ($100,000)
Ohio Christian University for Science ($500,000)
There was an argument made that these grants were legal because they weren’t directly funding religious indoctrination. After all, a building is secular, fixing a playground is secular, constructing a gymnasium is secular. But those grants freed up the schools’ own resources, allowing them to spend more of their own money on religious indoctrination. The grants promoted the spread of Christianity no matter how you looked at them.
Even more troubling? Some of the grants were so vague (“enhancements,” “improvements,” “renovation”) that no one could really tell where the money was going. ProPublica couldn’t get the answers even after contacting some of the schools.
ProPublica contacted administrators at each of these schools to ask what they will be using their new taxpayer money on, but they either didn’t answer or said that they didn’t immediately know. (One of the many differences between public and private schools is that the latter do not have to answer questions from the public about their budgets, even if they’re now publicly funded.)
So… either the administrators didn’t know what the money will be used for or they didn’t want to say. (I’m still not sure which of those options was more concerning.) If they weren’t willing to say what the money was being used for, why were they receiving it at all?
In August, Temple Christian School, which got $250,000 for building expansion, opened its new elementary building and celebrated its largest-ever kindergarten class with 40 students. Superintendent Bruce Bowman directly credited the voucher program for the enrollment jump: “The EdChoice scholarship makes it more affordable.” He didn’t mention the quarter-million-dollar gift, courtesy of taxpayers.
Keep in mind that those vouchers, according to a recent Washington Post story, were used by over 150,000 students last year. When you remove from that list students who need specific services (like those with disabilities or autism), roughly 98% of vouchers are used for religious education.
Also concerning was the amount used for these construction projects. $4 million may be a drop in the bucket when compared to the total budget, but as the ProPublica article noted, the voucher plan was relatively small too… until it exploded. This could have just been a test run to gauge the reaction, and if people didn’t complain loudly enough, there was no telling how much money Ohio Republicans would give to Christian schools in the future.
“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” [William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding,] said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”
Ohio’s Constitution makes clear that “no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.” Lawmakers could argue that these grants are legal because they’re not coming from “school funds.” They’re coming from capital funds instead. They’re not endorsing religion; they’re simply helping already existing schools accommodate a larger number of students taking advantage of “school choice” vouchers.
Whatever spin they use, though, it all benefits religious indoctrination with the help of taxpayer dollars. Public schools, which are already underfunded, will continue to struggle. And as that happens, lawmakers will inevitably cite those struggles—the struggles they fueled— as reasons to expand the voucher program and capital investments in these private religious schools.
The Associated Press has now added more insight into this entire scheme by pointing out how one organization—the Center for Christian Virtue, with an education policy arm called the “Ohio Christian Education Network”—is at the center of many of these grants.
A total of $4.9 million from the $717 million One-Time Strategic Community Investment Fund went to religious school construction grants. Those include one new school campus, the retrofit of an old building into a new school, a cafeteria expansion, and dozens of new classrooms, according to grant applications obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Six of eight schools to receive grants are part of Ohio Christian Education Network, which has grown from roughly 100 schools to 185 schools over the past three years. The network opened its first new school in 2022. The other two schools that received grants are Catholic.
So those eight schools I mentioned earlier were direct beneficiaries of the same Christian scholarship-giving network. And a person working with the CCV and the Ohio Christian Education Network used another loophole to make sure those schools got even more money:
Another Ohio program allows nonprofits to take financial advantage of expanded school choice through entities called “scholarship-granting organizations,” or SGOs. These groups can collect money for private school scholarships, and donations of up to $1,500 per household are made effectively free through a tax writeoff. Public records show Corrinne Vidales, an attorney and lobbyist for CCV and legal counsel to OCEN, was pivotal in laying the groundwork for the arrangement.
Because Republicans want to decimate the public school system, they’re relying on these Christian grifters to funnel money to religious schools any way they can.
It’s also worth mentioning that the CCV didn’t arise because it was motivated by education. It came into being two decades ago, under a slightly different name, in order to stop pornography. The AP says the group was “best known for its role in Ohio’s 2004 gay marriage ban” before eventually transitioning into an anti-public education organization. They’ve also worked to pass laws punishing transgender students (to block them from using the proper bathrooms, participating in sports, and receiving health care).
IRS filings show annual contributions to the center grew nearly tenfold, from $412,000 in 2015, to $3 million in 2021, to $4.4 million in 2022. That was the year it established its own scholarship-granting organization.
In 2021, the group purchased a $1.25 million building on Columbus’ Capitol Square, within sight of the Ohio Statehouse.
While CCV now boasts of being “Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization,” [Ohio Christian Education Network Executive Director Troy] McIntosh emphasized that the center’s bottom line is not fed by taxpayer money. While that is true, the impact of the SGO tax writeoff to Ohio’s budget has been estimated at as much as $70 million a year, including via direct revenue lost to cities, towns and libraries.
That’s money that could have gone toward the public good. Instead, it’s going to fund Christian indoctrination. Just like Republicans want.
Donald Trump just nominated an Education Secretary, former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon, who has said she wants to eliminate the department. Even if she doesn’t go that far, it’s expected that she will attempt to nationalize the kind of program we’re seeing in Ohio, with more vouchers, more money for private Christian schools, and far less funding for public education. She’ll do it under the guise of “school choice” and “parents’ rights” and other euphemistic phrases that hide how much Republicans want to harm our schools.
(Large portions of this article were published earlier)
Christians are fixated with indoctrinating young people because they know full-well if they wait until they're adults to push their message it will be ignored. Private schools, religious or otherwise, should not get one cent of public money, either directly or indirectly. These people operate under the delusion Christianity makes the world a better place, in spite of what history has to say on that subject.
The Christian Nationalists won't stop until they have all the money and power. This is just one more example of how they are shifting money and power away from the people and onto their theocratic hierarchy.