Leaving no wiggle room, Ky. Supreme Court trips up GOP march to destroy public schools
If you appreciate any of the following things: public schools, public teachers, the civic good, the Kentucky Constitution, the Commonwealth, and general fair play, then the Kentucky Supreme Court handed you a very nice early gift.
They ruled unanimously that the Education Opportunity Account Act — which allows people to get tax credits for donating to organizations that then give scholarships to private schools — was completely unconstitutional. No wiggle room at all. The reason as Justice Lisabeth Hughes wrote is simple: “Applying the plain language of this section, the income tax credit raises money for nonpublic education and its characterization as a tax credit rather than an appropriation is immaterial,” Hughes wrote.
Because the Kentucky Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the Kentucky Constitution, this idea to divert funding from public schools to private ones is now quite dead and cannot be appealed.
‘It was pretty straightforward, they took a very textual approach and relied on some past precedents, they go back almost 100 years,” said University of Kentucky professor Jonathan Shaub. “They wrote it in a very black and white principle that taxpayer money has to go to public schools and we’re not going to buy into these tricks or workarounds.”
The framers of our state Constitution were pretty prescient, writing in not only the rights to an “efficient” system of public education, but protections against funding diversions.
Then as another little present in your stocking, Northern Kentucky University, which is the authorizer of charter schools in that area under House Bill 9, put a spoke in another politically motivated shenanigan. They were given the power to authorize charter schools in an extremely sketchy plan to give a wealthy GOP donor a charter school near a planned development. It was so sketchy that the NKU Board of Trustees didn’t even know about it.
On Tuesday, the board didn’t have a motion to accept the role of authorizer. No motion, no vote, no authorizer, no charter school. (For now. It’s possible that superintendents can make their own vote to authorize.)
In a statement Board Chair Rich Boehne said the board studied charters schools generally, and this proposal specifically.
“While I believe there are those on our board who would generally support our role as authorizer and those on our board who would vote against it, there is clear consensus – as evidenced by the board’s lack of action – that the option offered to us, as defined in House Bill 9, is not workable.”
Now, I’m sure the eager souls at Cato and Heritage and all Betsy DeVos’s other buddies are busy coming up with new ways to defund and therefore destroy public education. That’s what this is all about. Conservatives have long hated public education, which they see as godless, labor-loving brainwashing institutions that indoctrinate children with concepts like communism and evolution.
Please don’t scream at me about Jefferson County, where the dismal performance of segregated schools gave private school advocates an opening. Please. Most of those private schools opened to get away from Black people after the Brown v. Board decision, so don’t cry your crocodile tears about how you want to help West Enders. Yes, reform is needed there. But giving rich people tax credits that take away from public coffers to help mostly middle class people prop up private schools is not the answer.
Thank heavens Kentucky’s constitutional framers recognized what our legislative leaders today do not: That public education was a radical and revolutionary innovation that has been the mainstay of our democracy for at least two centuries. Could it use some fixing, such as better pay and better outcomes? Sure, but right now it’s also being asked to fix all the societal problems we face. What will not help it? Less money and less support. Thanks to everyone out there who recognized that. And for those who celebrate public education, have a very merry holiday.
