Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine officially asked the states Legislature to expand vouchers for K-12 private school tuition, a move that if implemented would be highly beneficial for hundreds of Orthodox Jewish families.
Currently, families are eligible for the state’s EdChoice scholarships if they either live in the area of a low-performing school or if their income is below a certain level. For now, a family of four can qualify for the vouchers if their income is at or below $69,375, which is 250% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.
Under DeWine’s proposal, the income limit to be eligible for the scholarships would be raised to 400% of the poverty line, meaning that a family of four making up to $111,000 would be eligible for the vouchers.
“This investment will allow more families than ever to take advantage of this scholarship and find the best school for their children,” DeWine said in his State of the State speech on Tuesday.
EdChoice vouchers are given as checks paid directly to private schools to help cover students’ tuition and currently stands at $5,500 for K-8 students and $7,500 for students in grades 9-12.
See the image below for some context of how massive a proposal this is.
The announcement was hailed by Agudath Israel Ohio Director Yitz Frank, a longtime advocate for school choice in the state.
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7 Responses
This type of program should be legislated here in NYS – especially now while a decision to reinstate the vaccine exemption is being fought in the courts. The children’s religious exemption option was repealed due to influence by Big Pharma back in ‘2019, and homeschooling is the only legal way for parents to avoid vaccinating their children in NY right now.
Most states thankfully continue to have a religious exemption in place – some, including Ohio, have a much more respectable ‘philosophical exemption’, where beliefs contrary to the mainstream -and flawed, science are enough to procure a legal exemption – claiming non-belief in ‘the science’ does not have to involve religious sentiment.
This type of program should be legislated here in NYS
Haha the schools would just raise tuition the amount handed out.
I don’t see these programs lowering tuition for parents as these current unaffordable tuitions are already below the cost of education. These programs will only ease the burden on the school boards and directors to fund-raise. In other words, I am afraid the schools will take the vouchers and keep tuitions high anyway.
Y’K Rabbi Yitz Frank! The Ohio voucher program has been very successful as can be seen by the explosive growth of the Cleveland frum community. This expansion will help many more Ohio families qualify for vouchers to the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, Yeshiva Derech HaTorah, Telshe Yeshivah, Yeshiva of Cleveland, Yeshiva Highschool of Cleveland, Yavne, Bais Yaakov Derech HaTorah, Chaviva, etc…
let the investors start flipping houses , vouchers is whats building clevland
Sadly this cannot happen in NYS and surely not in NYC as the teachers union is way too powerful and would never allow “their” money to go to non-public schools.
@Lostspark
@besalel
Yeshivos -and all other schools, would have to be able to offer admission for non-vaccinating to compete with Ohio and most other states right now – and currently there is no ‘vaccine choice’ in NYS for any child not homeschooling.