The Kentucky State AFL-CIO’s opposition to Amendment 2 shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows labor history. Unions have always championed public schools. The Republican-backed amendment, which will be on the Nov.
5 ballot, would change the state Constitution to permit the General Assembly to pass laws letting tax dollars go to private schools. You can bet if voters approve the measure, come January, the GOP supermajority House and Senate will lose no time approving a voucher program in which parents and guardians can use those public funds to send their children to private schools. Just as unions have historically supported public schools, “Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools,” Brynn Tannehill wrote in the New Republic.
“School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education, precisely because she was a leading proponent (and funder) of defunding public schools, and funneling it to religious schools.
” Simply put, a voucher program will severely weaken public schools by draining away funds desperately needed to keep schools open. Depending on its size and scope, a voucher program in Kentucky would cost between $1.19 billion and $199 million, the equivalent of employing between 9,869 and 1,645 teachers and other staff, according to the Kentucky Center for Econ.