Kansas Republicans will probably push school vouchers again. Voters will hate it | Opinion

Here’s a warning for Kansas Republicans: You may love private school vouchers. But there’s every reason to think that voters hate them.

And here’s a warning for Kansans: There’s also good reason to believe that yet another voucher push is coming.

Vouchers — which would divert tax dollars from community and neighborhood public schools to help parents send their kids to private schools — have long been a high priority for conservatives in Topeka.

So far, despite repeated attempts, Republicans have failed to get pro-voucher bills across the finish line.

But the GOP strengthened its supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature in last week’s elections. That means conservatives can lose a vote here and there and still push right-wing legislation past Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto pen.

Which worries Kansas public education advocates.

“We were hoping that we would get more moderate Republicans or Democrats elected who would be against vouchers,” said Scott Rothschild of Kansans for Excellence in Education, a group that promoted moderate candidates for the Kansas State Board of Education during the recent campaign. (Full disclosure: Rothschild and I worked together at The Lawrence Journal-World nearly two decades ago.)

The group’s hopes didn’t come to fruition. Conservatives won, both in the Legislature and on the education board.

“I think we’ll see about a (voucher) proposal come out of the legislature now,” Rothschild said.

Losses at polls in red states

If and when Kansas Republicans do make another effort to push vouchers and undermine public schools, they’ll do so at an interesting moment. Voters in three states — including two deep-red states — last week overwhelmingly rejected voucher programs at the ballot box.

Colorado voters defeated legislation that would let parents use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools. No surprise there — it’s a solidly blue state.

But two-thirds of Kentucky voters also rejected a voucher proposal.

And next-door to Kansas, GOP-loving Nebraska voters repealed an existing voucher program in that state by astonishing margins. Not a single county voted to keep the status quo.

“Even (Nebraska’s) reddest county, where 95% of voters supported Trump, said no to vouchers,” said ProPublica.

Vouchers, the nonprofit news organization pointed out, “have never won when put to voters. Instead, they lose by margins not often seen in such a polarized country.”

That’s not actually a surprise.

As I keep saying: Voters may lend Republicans their support. They just don’t much like Republican policies. Why should education be any different?

And why should Kansas be any different?

Center of the community

I did much of my growing up in Hillsboro, a small town in central Kansas. The public schools there weren’t just places to stash kids during the day: They were a center of community life. Pretty much the whole town would turn out for football and basketball games, but also band and choir performances and the occasional school play.

Along with our churches, county fair and the Pizza Hut, school events were where we met each other and built a life together.

That was a few decades ago, but I suspect the dynamic remains the same.

That’s a big reason why voucher efforts have — so far, at least — fallen short in the Sunflower State and elsewhere. When you hurt public schools, you hurt the communities around them. And vouchers hurt public schools by starving them of resources.

Voters hate that. They should.

Which is something for Kansas Republicans to keep in mind when they make their next inevitable attempt to pass a voucher program here.

“I think what you’re going to find is that people don’t want you messing with their school,” said Rothschild, who worked for the Kansas Association of School Boards before his retirement.

“You know, there may be this general unease of public education in the abstract,” he added, “but when it comes to my school — or where my grandkids go to school or where my kids go to school — I’m invested and I don’t want anyone messing with that.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Kansas Republicans will probably push school vouchers again. Voters will hate it | Opinion."