A truly Dickensian Work Session
The Board of Education kicks off the New Year in a covetous mood.
This past week at the CHUH Board of Education’s work session it was rather clear that the members had a very forward looking agenda. And the image ahead of them was as if it was a mirage that Ohio’s Fair School Funding Plan may actually be giving them a year-over-year benefit. After a long discussion quibbling over funding levels for CHUH relative to Shaker Heights between BoE member James Posch and district CFO Scott Gainer, Dan Heintz went into a long tirade over “ghost vouchers”, but in the midst of it he made a statement that says the quiet part out loud. “The budget that was was passed this past June-July was. . . semi-public school friendly. . . [a]nd it is very rare that you get two pro-public school biennial budgets in a row”. His reaction to the numbers presented was if anything of disbelief - even disappointment. It’s almost as if giving the people that run this district what they want is not actually the way to satisfy them. As recently as September the progressive group Policy Matters Ohio had this to say about the FSFP: “If fully implemented, the FSFP will remedy many of the failures of the old system and make the funding scheme more equitable and constitutional.”
See video for BoE member Dan Heintz’s “ghosts of vouchers past” remarks.
But Heintz was not happy; he conjured his best Ebenezer Scrooge impression, ranting that “I’m beginning to call it ‘ghost vouchers’, because that’s really what it is. It’s sort of the ghosts of previous vouchers that are still haunting us. The ‘ghosts of vouchers past’”. This is more standard behaviour one can expect of him when confronted with anything unpleasant:
Bad hair day? Vouchers.
Flat tire? Vouchers letting the pressure out of his tires.
Bad weather? Climate change, but also vouchers.
Chicken coop raided and all the hens dead? Coyotes that moved to Cleveland Heights to take advantage of the vouchers. It’s his go-to scapegoat, and so long as he sits on this BoE, we are not going to get many deeper interpretation of the problems that the public schools are encountering beyond citing vouchers as some evil spectre haunting him at night.
Don’t let reality get in the way of complaining
The meeting preceded by one day the publication of Heintz’s opinion piece on Cleveland.com asserting that “Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program has failed”. It is one more salvo in his campaign to support the recent decision by the BoE to sue the State of Ohio over what they claim is the unconstitutional Heintz relied in his piece on a number of assumptions, such as that the voucher program is only based on “the narrative that voucher students are fleeing failing schools”. He answered this straw man argument by stating that 95% of the students in his district using the EdChoice vouchers have never been in one of its schools. “These families are fleeing a tuition bill, not a failing school,” he writes regarding households that choose to take the voucher.
This reading of the situation misleads the reader as to what it means to “flee” a school district. Does Dan Heintz really believe, as his logic suggests, that students must first go through a trial-and-error experience with a public school regardless of its ratings or reputation, before their application for a voucher is deemed to be valid? That is not the grand purpose of the school choice movement per EdChoice. It states that “[s]chool choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs —whether that’s to a public school, private school, charter school, home school or any other learning environment families choose.” Heintz’s piece jumps to one conclusion. I know people whose children experienced two other scenarios that escape it: a) students whose older siblings had a negative experience at a district school, and who therefore were never enrolled and b) students from households that judged the school district to be failing based on feedback from neighbours or news reports and decided to move to an entirely different district. Neither of those categories would have been reflected by that analysis.
Think of all that coin. . . I mean kids
Where does Heintz’s 95% statistic come from? He cites a 2021 piece by Ideastream that interviews none other than Scott Gainer, his own CFO. Gainer actually claims it is 94% and then says that “[w]e’re not losing kids to EdChoice, we’re losing money to EdChoice”. In the same article interview he makes the demand that EdChoice’s harm toward the district’s finances be rectified by the state legislature to fund vouchers from the state budget and giving public schools the same amount of money that they should be getting. But he never places a figure on that demand. The only way that I can interpret it is that the district does not want local taxes to go toward paying for the vouchers AND that they also want more funding from the State of Ohio for their own schools. Are we really to believe that the BoE and district administration’s motivations lay in their concern for the quality and style of education for these voucher students or for that matter the ones in the district?
Cherry Picking? Bah humbug!
Playing a familiar game, Heintz laments in his article the fact that so many of the students taking advantage of EdChoice in fellow lawsuit plaintiff Richmond Heights are from white families, with only 3% of the district’s public school students being white. He contends that in majority-minority districts the white population uses EdChoice in order to escape diverse schools and their tuition bills. But how about a district that is overwhelmingly majority-minority? East Cleveland schools have a 98.5% black, non-Hispanic population, with the city’s overall population being 90.4% black. Of their student population 1,091 are enrolled in district schools, 301 are enrolled in another district through open enrollment or other means, 611 are enrolled in “community schools”, and 180 are enrolled in EdChoice scholarship or expansion programs. This means that more than half of the grade school students in East Cleveland are using a non-district option. As the EdChoice program itself claims vouchers are not the only option that should be available; community/charter schools are another one that is also popular, particularly in core urban districts.
Speaking of core urban districts, let’s examine the breakdown for Ohio’s largest school district Columbus City SD which also happens to be a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. The district itself has 42,054 students enrolled at the latest tally. A further 4,049 are enrolled in other districts by open enrollment or other means. EdChoice Scholarship and Expansion students in the district number 6,720 students, which is proportional to about 8% of all students. Heintz contended in his article that since EdChoice was introduced more than 7% of CCSD’s white students have been lost, but he neglects to actually cite whether they opted for EdChoice or moved to other districts. Let’s also throw in the factor that he is afraid to address: Another 18,582 students are enrolled at site-based “community schools” and a further 1,812 at online ones. Together these represent 26% of the total student enrollment. Community schools are publicly funded, non-traditional options that are not controlled by the local school district. According to the pro-school choice Fordham Institute the statewide enrollment for charter schools is 48.4% black, and over 65% nonwhite. Why does Heintz neglect to mention the effect of community/charter schools? For starters, we do not have a single accredited charter school in this district and the total CHUH resident students enrolled in them is a paltry 409. There are
Is the BoE correct about the dire state of the schools, regardless of whether vouchers are the cause? The data from the past year has if anything been discouraging for the faction calling itself “Pro-Public”. In 2016 then-superintendent Talisa Dixon disclosed that enrollment had declined over the preceding decade from 6,300 students to 5,400. According to the latest available report card enrollment has since then plummeted to 4,501 students. EdChoice voucher students which a year ago according to the Ideastream article numbered 1,400 students have ballooned to 1,772.
Our public student population is not only declining, but is in an accelerating decline. Is that only an issue of vouchers? During the recent Board of Education elections in which the current CHUH incumbents were re-elected, another familiar name was elected in a neighbouring district. Wendy Leatherberry now serves on the Beachwood BoE and also is a member of its Parent Equity and Engagement Team. But Heights residents may remember her from being CHUH BoE member in 2004-08, including its president in 2006. Ironically one of her children entered grade school during that period. If a person with such a senior position with our district moved to a neighbouring one for its public schools, couldn’t the problem lay somewhere besides the voucher program?
Message to the reader
Last year I started The Miramar Scar because I no longer believe that waiting for local elections or merely complaining is the way to best affect Cleveland Heights-University Heights. We see the current board’s breezy re-election yielding predictable results. Rather than work to make its own schools more competitive through improved standards and better financial management, they choose to demonize voucher households. The Miramar Scar is here to represent an alternative. Let’s not disparage the choice of any family as far as its educational options. I hold that we should respect all parents whether they pray the rosary, study the Torah, or have no religious beliefs at all. Targeting parents for “dodging a tuition bill” is despicable demagoguery and it does nothing to help maintain a vibrant and thriving public school which this board claims is its goal. Please help me hold our district accountable by subscribing, sharing, and commenting.