K–12 alternatives will break the bank
Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District Treasurer Scott Gainer has an interesting responsibility that I stumbled across in my recent effort to understand K–12 education options in Ohio: He is responsible for approving home-schooling requests that exempt children from Ohio's education requirements.
While public schools are free to all and available everywhere, Ohio families can legally participate in four nonpublic alternatives—charter schools; chartered nonpublic schools (i.e., traditional private schools); home schooling; and non-chartered nonpublic schools, which are religious schools that choose, based on beliefs, not to be chartered by the state. Specific rules apply to each of the options, which are described on the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce's website, at education.ohio.gov.
These nonpublic alternatives vary in where they are available and whom they include, as well as in curricula, levels of professionalism and outcomes. Religion is an option in all except charter schools, and some form of state funding is provided to all except the non-chartered schools.
Ohio law requires school attendance. Families can meet that obligation by sending their children to a public, charter, or chartered nonpublic school. Homeschooled children are excused from compulsory attendance when their family notifies their school district's treasurer of their intent to home-school. Students enrolled in non-chartered nonpublic schools, some of which are located in private homes, are excused if the school issues a report to the parents that they will meet state operating standards and then shares that report and a list of students with the district treasurer.
The non-chartered nonpublic schools are allowed to operate without state oversight because of religious beliefs opposing state regulation, but each school must agree to meet the state requirements for hours of instruction in a variety of subjects, track attendance, and follow health and safety laws. Immunizations are not required. The schools need not test students or provide evidence of student learning. Students can earn a GED but not a state-issued diploma.
The Ohio legislature has no obligation to fund these private education alternatives. Until recently, partly in deference to the separation of church and state, it reserved taxpayer funds for the state’s inclusive and nonsectarian public school system. Individualism as a priority was seen as a personal financial responsibility.
The state started to dismantle the wall of separation in 1997. It approved tuition vouchers for private schools and authorized publicly funded but privately operated charter schools. The appetite for funding private education keeps growing and has resulted in the proliferation of voucher programs, the removal of limits on voucher eligibility, and tax credits for home schooling. A Legislative Service Commission report set the cost for charter schools and vouchers for fiscal year 2024 at more than $2 billion.
In 2024, an effort to extend public funds to non-chartered nonpublic schools failed. Religious opposition to state involvement is the rationale for the very existence of these schools, so asking for public funds was a profound contradiction.
The existence of five education options is a good idea, especially as it accommodates the breadth of diversity in our multicultural society. People do have strong religious convictions that should be respected, and people have differing ideas about education. Damage is caused when a private responsibility becomes the public’s, and when it is paid for by failing to adequately fund the system that serves the public. Lawmakers have ignored the state constitution in this regard and retreated from the common good.
This year the legislature will have another chance to express its values. Will it make funding the public system the top priority, or will it put the interests of a small minority ahead of its obligation to uphold the state constitution?

Susie Kaeser
Susie Kaeser moved to Cleveland Heights in 1979. She is the former director of Reaching Heights, and is active with the Heights Coalition for Public Education and the League of Women Voters. A community booster, she is the author of a book about local activism, Resisting Segregation.