The “existential threat” facing Ohio’s public school system

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 14:16:14 +0000

William Phillis started teaching in 1958. “I’ve always liked the idea of schooling. I’ve always liked the idea of the public school system,” said Phillis. Only five years before, the people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment to create a Board of Education, and schooling in the state was changing rapidly. “The state started making progress in terms of curriculum and programs for kids,” he said. “At that point in time, there was no vocation, there were no charter schools, there were no vouchers.”

School vouchers are public funds that help parents pay for education at private schools—ostensibly to give children in low-performing public schools the chance to attend a participating private school. The first major voucher programs were introduced in the 1990s. “There’s only going to be a certain portion of the state general revenue fund going to education,” Phillis said. “And so for every dollar that’s taken out of school districts and given to charters and vouchers, it’s a dollar less that’s provided for public education.”

The Cleveland Scholarship Program was started in 1996, which allowed Cleveland parents to use public money for tuition at private schools as well as allowing students to attend schools in neighboring districts. The Educational Choice Scholarship expanded the program in 2005. Last year, House Bill 33 revised the EdChoice program to include all students— regardless of school district performance or family income. Ohio now spends more than $970 million on private school voucher scholarships.

How should we support school shooting survivors?

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 12:18:45 +0000

There have been more than 300 school shootings so far in 2023—an increase from last year, which itself saw a record high. Students are now expected to be prepared for the possibility of a shooting at any moment, often scanning for exits in each room they enter.

Karly Scholz worked in gun violence activism for six years before she experienced a school shooting at the University of Virginia in November, 2022. “It was still just a shock to me,” says Scholz, currently in her third year at UVA and a member of Project Unloaded’s Youth Council. “No amount of work, no amount of talking to victims, no amount of anything, really, I think, could prepare me and prepare anyone else for what had happened.” Zoe Touray, a survivor of the Oxford High School Shooting in Michigan in November 2021, explained that the full gravity of what happened did not hit her immediately. In the aftermath, she said “it felt like it was one of the most important things to try to get back to normal.” Touray eventually realized that “after a shooting, things aren’t necessarily gonna go back to normal, if there ever even was a normal.” That realization typically marks the long process of grappling with the effects, both short- and long-term, of witnessing gun violence. Since then, Touray has become an activist, working with March for Our Lives and starting her own organization, SEE, Survivors Embracing Each Other.

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The “existential threat” facing Ohio’s public school system

How should we support school shooting survivors?