Liberty schools plan to sue state

May 13, 2009 at 12:10a.m.

Liberty schools Superintendent Mark Lucas

The voucher program and Ohio’s funding formula are unconstitutional, officials with the district contend.

LIBERTY — The township school district has approved a resolution announcing its intent to bring a lawsuit against the state to recover money that Ohio is spending to send students using vouchers to private schools.

“What’s been lost [financially] in the past and is projected to be lost in the future is devastating to this school system,” Superintendent Mark Lucas said after Tuesday’s board of education meeting.

The decision comes one week after voters overwhelmingly defeated a 10-year, 9.9-mill emergency operating levy.

The move also will authorize Lucas to look for a team of attorneys to represent the district for free. The district’s next move will be to seek legal advice from local and state lawyers, several of whom have called to express an interest in pursuing the action, Lucas noted.

School officials gave no filing date or dollar amount.

Lucas and board President Gloria Lang said that the core argument in the lawsuit will be that the vouchers, along with the state school-funding formula, are unconstitutional.

A recent change by the Ohio Legislature “opened the door for Liberty to be included among the schools that had to honor the Ed Choice vouchers,” a statement said.

The program offers tuition for youngsters in academically troubled public schools to attend private schools.

For two years, E.J. Blott Elementary School had been in academic watch but has moved up to continuous improvement on the state report card. Those pupils were eligible for the voucher program during the 2007-08 school year.

Predicting a $1.8 million deficit by the end of the next fiscal year, Lucas said that the district pays about $5,200 per pupil who uses a voucher. Over 12 years, that comes to more than $62,000, a situation the board has said is unfair to township taxpayers.

This year, the taxpayers will have to spend roughly $700,000 to send 134 youngsters to private schools, the superintendent said.

He added that the district stands to lose more than $8 million by 2021, if the voucher program continues as is.

According to the district, 35 pupils came to Liberty schools from parochial or private schools during a two-month period in 2007. All left at the end of the school year and took the vouchers with them. Those funds otherwise would have gone to the district, which will continue to lose money annually until such students graduate from high school, school officials say.

Also that year, 43 kindergarten pupils never attended a class in Liberty, yet selected to apply for vouchers at the district’s expense, Lang noted.

Lucas said he felt the change in the law implemented toward the end of Gov. Bob Taft’s term would be devastating to the school district, something he and the board feels has come to fruition.

The superintendent added that he and other school officials plan to testify before a Senate Finance Committee meeting Thursday in Columbus about the district’s financial problems, among other things.