The Ohio Senate yesterday voted 24-8 to approve changes made by the Conference Committee on Senate Bill (SB) 89 to substantially revise the Educational Choice (EdChoice) Voucher Program. The changes would alter eligibility criteria for the performance-based program and increase to 250% from 200% the poverty threshold for the income-based expansion program.
The House is scheduled to meet today at 1:00 pm. to approve the Conference Committee report, which will then go to Gov. Mike DeWine for his signature.
Call your House members now and tell them not to approve the conference committee report and instead request another conference committee be convened to make the following modifications to the bill:
- Remove buildings with an overall rating of A, B, or C. Under the revised plan pending before the House, 110 of the 473 designated buildings, or 23%, most recently received an overall grade of A, B, or C.
- Prevent the adding of new buildings to the eligibility list that were never on the list before. Under the plan, 43 buildings across 27 districts would be newly added to the eligibility list.
- Do not increase the performance index ranking threshold to 20% - maintain it at 10%. This arbitrary increase does nothing other than designate more public school buildings.
A list of those buildings eligible under the plan before the House can be accessed here.
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