The North Royalton School District recently learned that they will be taken off the list of Ohio school districts that were mandated to participate in the state’s EdChoice Voucher Program. Last year, with the adoption of the state’s biennium budget, it included a change in its EdChoice scholarship program that has added the North Royalton District, as well as other well-to-do districts to their program.
The EdChoice Scholarship program offers scholarship to parents of students in underperforming public schools and for low income students. The scholarship is used to attend private schools that meet requirements for program participation. The EdChoice scholarship amount is currently $4650 for grades K-8 and $6000 for grades 9-12. EdChoice will pay either the scholarship amount or the private school’s actual tuition amount, whichever is less, covering tuition.
As part of the biennium budget legislation, the criteria for eligible school districts changed. “Schools can be added to the EdChoice designated public school list for a variety of reasons, including complicated formulas that consider deficits in graduation rate, K-3 literacy, value-added progress scores or performance index ranking in the bottom 10% of the state,” said North Royalton School Superintendent Greg Gurka. “North Royalton High School was included on this list based on overall value-added report card grades in the years 2017-18 and 2018-19. We believe the criteria for EdChoice designated public schools should be based on achievement scores, not value-added. The value-added score reflected on district report cards are representing a three-year average for the district and/or building, not the progress of the single school year being reported on. If this was based on last year’s value-added score alone, we would have received an “A”, and North Royalton High School would not have been designated an EdChoice school ” The number of the eligible schools list has jumped from about 40 in the state for the 2018-19 school year to 139 this year. That number for the 2020-21 school year explodes, with the expansion of criteria of districts. The list, published by Ohio Department of Education shows over 1,200 – 70% of the districts in Ohio.
The North Royalton Board of Education unanimously adopted a resolution opposing the EdChoice Program, stating that “such vouchers will be available to numerous families and students who have never attended North Royalton or any other public schools and for whom state funding has never been provided to North Royalton or any other public schools.” It goes on to say that North Royalton’s state funding will be unjustly decreased by the amount of the vouchers provided to such families and students who have not and will not attend public schools and others who transfer to private/parochial schools; and, the estimated loss of revenue to the North Royalton City School District over the next four (4) years is $3,100,000 which would devastate the District’s finances.” It concludes by saying that “this Board believes that the EdChoice voucher program as it currently exists presents serious constitutional issues regarding the separation of church and state and the funding of religious institutions with public tax dollars; and, the State of Ohio has the constitutional responsibility to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools; and the EdChoice voucher program will have exactly the opposite effect by providing funding to private/parochial schools at the expense and to the detriment of public schools and their students.”
Upon learning about the news of the removal of the North Roaylton District, Gurka noted that “I am also very happy that the legislature provided temporary relief for the EdChoice program. While it does not ‘fix’ the program, it reverts back to the previous provisions and takes North Royalton High School off the list.” He went on to note that, “this is crucial now more than ever as the governor announced the other day that he is looking at a 20% decrease in state funding across the board. I don’t know how this will affect our District at this time, but it is good that no additional money from the EdChoice voucher program will be leaving our District.”
At the April 13 School Board Meeting, Gurka reported that “if you were not a school that was identified last year to be part of the program this year, you will not be subject to it next year. So, we were not a school identified in 2018-19, so, therefore, North Royalton High School is not only EdChoice program voucher any more.” He added that “this will be savings to our district of approximately $775,000, so that was a good thing for us.”
By GLORIA PLEVA KACIK
Contributing Writer