The following is a letter submitted by Dr. William Rannells, former Buckeye Central Board of Education member. The letter was published as received.
NEW WASHINGTON — EdChoice program is a band-aide approach designed to allow parents to choose an educational source replacing a failing school system in a designated school system by voucher.
This program has no success record. The end result of such system is further starvation of the failed system and over burdening the receiving system. This does not improve the educational process but instead shifts the educational burden to a system that has survived the scrutiny of the legislative processes that basically caused the many failures.
I am a taxpayer and retired resident of the Buckeye Central Local School system and past 12 year member of the local school board. For over 50 years the legislative bodies have failed to respond to the many cries from schools for improvements in school foundation funding, requiring programs with no funding provisions leaving the locals to address funding, and increasing staffing to hopefully improve school district performance to achieve a passing grade-card. Often local board members do not have sufficient training to identify and direct the educational process and many lack the initiative to address educational deficiencies.
The school failures are a result of legislative failures and local system failures. Addressing the failures with EdChoice is only hiding legislative failures and will increase the number of failures without assisting a failed system. EdChoice will draw funding from the failed system and allow it to be transferred to a performing system, overburdening that system with students with insufficient funds from the voucher the student is given. How can we consider that a resolve of failure of a long standing constitutionally required system.
Instead of another band-aide approach, maybe it is time to look outside the box to provide a solution to educational system problems. Systems generally fail due to lack of funding. Long overdue, it is time to fix the formula. Then, make the evaluation process equal and enforce the oversight system to attain the desired quality. If schools truly fail, correct the failures or realign the district boundaries to correct the failures or simply dissolve the district. Stop layering on programs that have not been of value to education.
EdChoice is not a means of correction but a cover-up for failures from the past. Education is big business with priceless results that is being overshadowed by legislators desiring votes rather than resolving problems. Contact your legislators and ask them to correct the problems instead of covering them over.