KY: Vouchers Would Be Bad News, Says Study

I'm not sure anyone would have expected Kentucky to emerge as one of the big voucher battlegrounds, but voucher fans have had a real uphill trek.

Kentucky voucherphiles created a bill, passed the bill in 2021, and then watched as the state supreme court ruled that the law was hugely unconstitutional. The problem was that Kentucky's constitution is unusually clear:

No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxation

Voucher thought they had circumvented the problem by using tax credit scholarships, and the attorney general led the defense of the vouchers with the old "the money is never actually in the government's hands" argument. The court was unimpressed. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” they wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.”

Deputy Chief Justice Lisabeth T. Hughes wrote “Simply stated, it puts the Commonwealth in the business of raising sum(s) . . . for education other than in common schools.”

So the next move for voucher fans was clear-- amend the state constitution so that taxpayer dollars can be handed over to private schools. That's Amendment 2. It's pretty simple:

The General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools.

Pick yes or no.

Now a new report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy lays out just how expensive a "yes" would be.

"The Impact of Diverting Public Money to Private School Vouchers in Kentucky" is deep and thorough and with more than enough charts and graphs to warm the wonky heart. But its findings are clear and cause for alarm.

Even a modest program would cost the state $199 million (the equivalent, the study points out, of employing 1.645 public school personnel). This is before the inevitable ballooning of the program. Arizona, on the forefront of universal vouchers is also on the forefront of having their budget slammed by a voucher program. ProPublica has just released a report showing that vouchers are about to force "hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects."

The report points out that in other voucher states, 65%-90% of the taxpayer-funded vouchers go to families that already have their children in private schools, and that in Kentucky, that group has an average household income 54% higher than public school families. Even if you think the wealthy have a right to be subsidized by the taxpayers (including the less wealthy ones), that group represents an expansion in the number of students using taxpayer dollars, a dramatic expansion of education costs.

The cost of all this will hit rural and poor areas hardest, because they are the ones most dependent on state support, which will be reduced by the voucher program. At the same time, since few rural areas have private schools available, the voucher dollars will represent money leaving the community entirely.

Meanwhile, in populous counties, vouchers will increase the total cost of education in the area. Public schools will retain stranded costs (heating costs don't shrink just because you have fewer students) and parallel school systems will duplicate administrative costs. There's a reason that school districts trying to cut costs close buildings rather than opening new ones. 

The report nails the bottom line pretty effectively.

If Amendment 2 passes, it will upend Kentucky’s longstanding constitutional commitment to public education and result in legislation that diminishes public schools across the commonwealth. The amendment will widen the growing divides that are already weakening Kentucky communities and hinder education’s role in fostering the healthy democracy necessary for every Kentuckian to thrive.

Let's hope the voters of Kentucky heed the warning.