Catholic Diocese of Cleveland misleads public about EdChoice
Same tactics as other taxpayer funded tuition subsidy defenders. But disappointing to see a Christian organization bear such a false witness.
How many times do I have to do this?
I guess one more.
In a recent post from Northeast Ohio Advocates for Catholic School, posted on the Diocese’s official website, Frank O’Linn — the Superintendent of Schools for the Diocese — claims that taxpayers get a better deal by subsidizing the private school tuitions of millionaires than they do paying for public schools.
Why?
Because we’re paying more now for the educations of kids in public, private and charters schools than ever before.
I shit you not.
Here’s his argument in a nutshell:
“There is no mention that for the most recent fiscal year, “the state of Ohio spent more on primary and secondary education than at any other time in state history. And state education spending will continue to increase” per the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Nary a word can be heard about the 24.9% increase in state appropriations over the 6 years of phasing in the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding plan, from $12.2 Billion in FY2021 to $15.3 Billion in FY2027 according to LSC Greenbooks. Mind you, that is merely the state portion, on top of the soaring property tax revenues funding traditional public schools, which combined amounted to $32.8 Billion in total K-12 spending in FY2024, the most recent year for which combined data is available.”
See? He got us. We’ve got money hand over fist. And the only reason a record number of schools are now forecasting funding shortfalls is too much spending. Or something like that.
Here’s the problem. Apparently the Superintendent of Catholic Schools in Cleveland doesn’t understand that when he’s looking at the “24.9% increase in state appropriations” since FY2021, those include increases to ALL K-12 education funding, including Charter Schools and Private Schools through tuition subsidies.
Do y’all want to hazard a guess as to how much of the $3.1 billion increase between FY21 and FY27 was due to the funding increases given to Charter Schools and Private School tuition subsidies?
Try 47% of the increase. That’s right. A cool $1.33 billion more is being spent on EdChoice tuition subsidies and largely failing Charter Schools.
Wanna see what the percentage increase is for each sector?
That’s right. Kids in public schools are getting 14.4 percent more state aid in 2026-2027 than they did in 2020-2021. But private schools are getting 224% more and Charter Schools are getting almost 50 percent more.
Just in terms of overall share of the state aid, kids in public schools will get about 72 percent of the state aid.
In 2020-2021, they got about 80 percent.
Just for shits and gigs, I took a look at the inflation rate since 2020-2021. Wanna guess what that number is? If you guessed 28%, you’d be correct, kids!
That means that the state of Ohio has kept up with about half the inflation rate for kids in public school districts.
Meanwhile, they’re giving Charter Schools (which are far less efficient than public schools because spend more than double the amount of per pupil revenue on administratuive costs that public schools) nearly double the inflationary increase and private schools about 10 times the inflation rate.
Must be nice, right?
Oh yeah. One more thing. According to O’Linn’s own source, the Ohio Legislative Service Commission Greenbook from last budget, FY2027 will be a $900 million cut in overall K-12 spending from the 2023-2024 school year. So even his bullshit comparison is bullshit.
Like I said, guys. I can’t make it up.
Let’s look at his complete misunderstanding of the Cupp Report as well1.
In his analysis, O’Linn is trying to tell us that public schools get plenty of money because the amount of state and local aid they’re getting has gone up so much.
What he fails to mention is that the percentage of local funding2 has jumped from 51 percent in FY2015 to 55 percent in FY2025. So while state aid for Charter Schools and EdChoice has exploded, so has local revenue to make up for their siphoning off all that state funding.
Need I remind anyone here that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4 times that relying too much on property taxes is unconstitutional? Forcing districts to go for more levies by shoveling billions to unaccountable private schools and less accountable Charter Schools seems to run contrary to that principle.
Apparently, O’Linn also ignored in his original LSC source the statement explaining how this works. I’ve posted it below for you to peruse at your leisure.
See, O’Linn makes a big deal (in BOLD, so it’s a big deal!) about how:
“The district’s complaints are meritless because state scholarships are funded separately from the recently enhanced district formula, a truth that even the most overzealous scholarship opponents have begun to acknowledge following last month’s circuit court hearing.”
But that’s not what the LSC document you quoted from says, Frank! (see, BOLD=important point!)
Because that’s how this works — charters, tutition subsidies and traditional school aid all come out of the same state funding line item. And is a major reason why Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page ruled EdChoice unconstitutional last year. Because if you move money to Charters and private schools, there is less for kids in public schools.
That’s just math.
Notice the other thing O’Linn didn’t mention: performance. I kind of miss batting back the original argument for these things — giving poor, underprivileged kids the opportunity to escape “failing schools” to go to private schools (hint: private schools didn’t actually do any of that).
But not even O’Linn can make that argument anymore. It’s all about choice for choice’s sake. In other words, it’s all about the adults. Kids? Not so much.
Another thing he doesn’t mention? His schools’ spending and revenue patterns.
But he doesn’t have to do that. Why? Because Ohio legislators have never in 30 years required a single penny of taxpayer funded tuition subsidy be accounted for publicly.
So that $1.3 billion many of his schools will gobble up next school year? We have no idea how much of it is being spent on administrators, teachers, support staff, busing, buildings, anything, the way we know how public school money is spent.
All this guy does is try to play into the same tired trope of ungrateful public schools grossly misspending public dollars. Meanwhile, we have no idea how his schools are spending, or misspending public dollars. Or performing, for that matter.
But I guess we can just take his word for it.
I mean his organization has a solid history of telling the truth about important stuff, right?
Um, yeah.
Taking the average of the average as O’Linn does is fraught with issues, which I won’t go into here. He even admits to tremendous variability in districts’ per pupil funding in his post. But I’ll play along.
I always include local and other non-tax revenue as local funidng because the other non-tax was always included as part of the local funidng claculation until 2013 when then-Gov. John Kasich decided to split them as an accounting gimmick so he could claim less local revenue was funding education.