COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Across the country, Christian education advocates have found legal ways to siphon taxpayer money typically used for public schools. One new approach in Ohio benefits schools affiliated with a growing conservative political group and facing objections from defenders of the separation of church and state.
With newly elected President Donald Trump, school choice advocates have found an ally in their efforts to share tax dollars with families to pay for things like private school tuition. Trump has proposed school choice as a way to counter what he calls left-wing indoctrination in public classrooms and is expected to seek momentum for the movement at the federal level.
The Ohio case shows how governments can push the boundaries to funnel money to private schools.
The state has spent a small portion of its budget surplus on competitive subsidies for the expansion and renovation of religious schools. Most of the winning construction projects are associated with the Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based advocacy group that has seen its revenues increase as a result of the state’s push to expand religious education opportunities.
Ohio last year created a universal voucher program that provides tuition from non-public schools, including religious schools, to every family in the state. Proponents of the construction subsidies say they could help address a capacity problem created by the popularity of the vouchers, especially in rural areas.
The nonprofit American United for Separation of Church and State has objected to the capital investments in religious schools, calling the practice unconstitutional and unprecedented in scale. While voucher programs involve spending decisions made by individual parents, the group argues that the new program means the government will pay schools directly.
“Taxpayers’ religious freedom is violated when their taxes are forcibly taken from them and devoted to religious instruction of a faith that those taxpayers do not subscribe to,” said Alex Luchenitser, the group’s deputy legal director.
The One-Time Strategic Community Investment Fund originated in the Republican-led Ohio Senate.
Spokesman John Fortney rejected the claim that directly aiding religious schools is unconstitutional. “This is laughable and a lie the left is using to once again smear parents who send their students to the school of their choice,” the Republican Senate spokesman said in a statement.
Across the country, expanded school choice programs have benefited religious organizations seeking to expand their educational offerings. Of the 33 states with private school programs, 12 allow any student to apply for public money to subsidize private, religious or home education, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.
The CCV and its education policy arm, Ohio Christian Education Network, have been advocating for years that Ohio’s K-12 voucher program, EdChoice, should apply to religious schools.
In an interview, Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network, said the voucher expansion in Ohio has not created new demand. It just made the options that families already wanted affordable. He said Ohio lawmakers had “a compelling interest” in addressing the capacity problem with the new construction subsidies.
“Parents who had children paid taxes, but they all went to schools that parent preferred not to attend,” he said.
A total of $4.9 million from the one-time $717 million Strategic Community Investment Fund went to grants for the construction of religious schools. These include a new school campus, renovation of an old building into a new school, a cafeteria expansion and dozens of new classrooms, according to grant applications obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Six of the eight schools receiving grants are part of the Ohio Christian Education Network, which has grown from about 100 schools to 185 schools over the past three years. The network opened its first new school in 2022. The other two schools that received subsidies are Catholic.
Another Ohio program allows nonprofits to benefit financially from expanded school choice through entities called “grant-making organizations,” or SGOs. These groups can raise money for private school scholarships, and donations of up to $1,500 per household are effectively made free through tax write-offs. Public records show that Corrinne Vidales, an attorney and lobbyist for CCV and legal counsel to OCEN, played a critical role in laying the groundwork for the settlement.
“We think SGOs will be great for Ohio’s students and would like to play an important role in whatever way we can,” she emailed a member of Republican Attorney General Dave Yost’s staff in July 2021.
In a separate email exchange, Vidales said the center had reserved the name “Ohio Christian Education Network” several years earlier but had not used it. They kept it active, she wrote, “for such a purpose as this.”
Once a fringe anti-porn group called Citizens for Community Values, best known for its role in Ohio’s 2004 ban on gay marriage, the group today known as the Center for Christian Virtue has remade itself over the past eight years and benefited from the process.
Along with school choice measures, the group lobbied for bills that would require public schools to ban transgender students from girls’ bathrooms and girls’ sports and ban gender-affirming care. IRS documents show that annual contributions to the center increased nearly tenfold, from $412,000 in 2015, to $3 million in 2021 and to $4.4 million in 2022. That was the year it launched its own organization to provide established scholarships.
In 2021, the group purchased a $1.25 million building on Columbus’ Capitol Square, within sight of the Ohio Statehouse.
Although CCV now boasts of being “Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization,” McIntosh emphasized that the center’s profits are not fueled by taxpayer dollars. While that is true, the impact of the SGO tax write-off on Ohio’s budget is estimated to be as much. of $70 million per year, including through direct revenues lost to cities, municipalities and libraries.
Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said it’s clear that expanded school choice is diverting money from public education to private schools and their operators. The union supports long-running lawsuits alleging that EdChoice created an unconstitutional system of separately funded private schools.
“It’s very clear that the profit motive runs through this movement,” he said.
Last year, after Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to protect access to abortion in the state constitution, CCV President Aaron Baer blamed the public school system for undermining conservative values.
“The fact is that now every child qualifies for a scholarship to get out of the public schools, right, and for us we need them to get a real education, and real education is Christian education,” Baer said . in a podcast.
Baer said he was aware that such a statement would be met with criticism.
“But how can you possibly understand what’s going on around you, how things work, why things work, if you don’t understand who made them and what He made them for?” he said. “And so it is extremely important for us to get kids out of the public education system and into church schools – that means starting more church schools.”
CCV formed two for-profit entities this summer: the Ohio Christian Education Network LLC and the United States Christian Education Network LLC, according to state company documents.
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