Wealthy schools have a duty, too
Wealthy schools have a duty, too
Upper Arlington needs to tell the Lieutenant Governor to eat shit—for the good of Ohio's public school students.
If you go far back enough in my writing, you’ll find I’ve written some mean things about Upper Arlington.
I still have some criticisms, but it’s indisputable that Arlington, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Columbus, has been standing on business in these past few elections.
It’s been quite the political shift for a suburb that was once so conservative, then-State Senator Jon Husted moved his family there while representing a Kettering-area district in 2009.
From dispatch.com:
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled [on Oct. 6th, 2009] that state Sen. Jon Husted must be treated as a resident of his Montgomery County district for voting purposes, overturning a decision by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that he doesn't live there.
The court ruled 7-0 with separate opinions to require that the Montgomery County Board of Elections keep Husted's name on its poll books as properly registered in Kettering near Dayton.
Husted had sued Brunner in the Ohio Supreme Court to block her Sept. 21 ruling that he actually lives with his wife and family in Upper Arlington and therefore cannot vote from the Kettering address.
Give Husted this much: He had enough animal cunning in his Botox-swollen head to know he had a bright enough future in Ohio politics that he could re-home his family to the Columbus area a couple of years before he won a statewide election for Secretary of State.
When Husted made those plans, he, like most Americans, never envisioned Donald Trump successfully running for president and driving wealthy suburbs like Upper Arlington into the lap of Democrats.
And give Upper Arlington this much, too: It wasn’t a one-off shift. Upper Arlington did not come back to Trump in 2020. The Golden Bears also voted the right way in last year’s August Special Election and the November General Election when we enshrined abortion rights into the constitution.
Those were hard times for Husted, who probably envisioned Upper Arlington as a conservative slice of Heaven in The Big City when he originally relocated his family there.
Like Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who finished third in his Upper Arlington precinct during his laughable U.S. Senate campaign, Husted has found his politics less and less acceptable to his neighbors.
Here’s one infamous example, via Farnoush Amiri and Julie Carr Smyth of The Associated Press in
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s lieutenant governor promised a group of Asian American neighbors during a weekend meeting that he would use his public platform to speak out against unwarranted violence facing their community, though he failed to apologize for the divisive tweet that prompted their concern.
Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted confirmed during an unrelated news conference Tuesday that the private, two-hour meeting took place this past weekend at his suburban Columbus home, which he and his wife, Tina, thought “would be the best way to show our genuine desire for dialogue.”
Bishop Lord, an informal spokesperson for the Asian American families, called the meeting productive, but noted that it did not end in an apology from Husted. The lieutenant governor’s March 26 tweet in which he used the term “Wuhan virus” has been criticized as racist.
That’s Husted’s narcissism distilled to its essence: Say something inherently racist, then when your neighbors get angry, act like you’re doing the devout thing by inviting them into their home for “dialogue” while not even having the decency to apologize.
Husted’s political views becoming increasingly unpopular among his neighbors are a minor concern to his ultimate ambition of being Ohio’s governor because he thinks his neighbors should be thanking him for wanting to lead our state.
Through that lens, it’s easy to see why Husted wants to use his prestigious office to try and intimidate the Upper Arlington School Board from doing the right thing.
From known charlatan Jack Windsor, who unsurprisingly has a direct line to our lieutenant governor:
Columbus, Ohio – Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted (R) sent a letter to the Board of Education – Upper Arlington Schools advising officials to not join litigation aimed at striking down the EdChoice Scholarship program.
According to Husted’s letter, shared with The Ohio Press Network, if the board joined litigation, it would be an effort “to deny 348 Upper Arlington families and students currently using a state voucher as their choice of education for their children, many of which are attending other schools because of autism or other special needs.”
Husted using autistic and other special needs kids as political fodder is wild but not surprising. Husted knows damn well that private schools can legally discriminate against autistic and special needs kids.
For the uninitiated, a coalition of public schools is suing the state to end the voucher program, which is little more than a decades-long scheme to siphon public money from vulnerable students and put that cash in the pockets of wealthy white families already sending their children to private schools.
From Eileen McCory of daytondailynews.com:
The state of Ohio awarded $993.7 million for families to send kids to private schools last school year, and the number has not yet been finalized. This is $383.7 million more than the year before and over $30 million more than legislative analysists predicted when lawmakers expanded the voucher program last year.
Lawmakers said universal access to the EdChoice expansion program would give more families access to a private school education. But a Dayton Daily News analysis of Ohio Department of Education data found so far, it’s mainly subsidizing families already sending their kids to private schools.
The number of income-based EdChoice vouchers used in private schools in six area counties — Montgomery, Miami, Greene, Warren, Butler and Clark — jumped from 3,058 in the 2022-2023 school year to 12,637 last year.
But while voucher usage grew by 313%, enrollment at schools that accept vouchers grew by only 3.7%, to 20,142 students.
This report follows ProPublica’s bombshell in January, revealing similar statewide numbers and how private schools pressured parents to take the state money even if they didn’t want it.
Like most wealthy districts in the state, Upper Arlington has yet to pledge support for the lawsuit despite seeing a 2000 percent increase in students taking vouchers (11 in 2023 to 301 in 2024).
One Upper Arlington source told The Rooster that the board is expected to vote on that decision at Tuesday’s meeting. That source also said Board President Jenny McKenna, an unknown wild card, holds the decisive vote.
Another source disputed that timeline, saying the board had already unofficially decided to let the deadline pass without joining.
We won’t know who has the better pulse on the situation until Tuesday, but I don’t think Husted’s timing to write the letter (and subsequently leak it to a right-wing schlepper like Windsor) is coincidental.
But this will test how far Upper Arlington has come in the last 15 years. Staying out of this lawsuit would be something expected of the Republican-dominated version of the city.
Upper Arlington has a chance to send a message to other wealthy districts in Ohio that they also need to invest money and sweat equity in this lawsuit. The letter from Husted should be all that any board member still on the fence needs to see.
Why take orders from that bum?
Husted has dedicated his career to hurting public schools. Upper Arlington sachems may feel the status quo does not currently harm them, but that ignores the fact that, despite achieving nearly universal school vouchers last year, Republicans are already dreaming of stealing more public money for private schools.
From Anna Staver of dispatch.com in July 2023:
Building new schools is expensive, and it can take years, especially to raise the millions often needed for construction. That means what Ohio spends on EdChoice scholarships will depend on how fast private schools can and/or want to build.
"The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon for school choice," Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said. "If there’s no place for you to go, then there’s no school choice."
Maybe Upper Arlington will be able to stay a wealthy, exclusionary suburb despite the influx of new residents to Columbus.
But its school leaders need to understand the concept of solidarity—something foreign to the half-eaten bowl of porridge that sits where Husted’s brain is supposed to be.
Take this clip from last summer, the first time I ever busted up Husted, when I hit him for being a key cheerleader of ECOT, the $800 million public school swindle for which no conspirator went to prison.
“Why do you care?” Husted asks, his famous narcissism percolating to the surface.
The cum-stained sock where his brain is supposed to be can’t process why anyone would care about a fake school that stole hundreds of millions of dollars and put tens of thousands of students onto the street in the middle of the school year.
That’s the antithesis of public education—in wealthy districts like Upper Arlington and poor districts, too. Ending the voucher scam and returning that money to public schools isn’t a burden that poor, marginalized districts should be expected to bear.
Especially when it comes to financing lawsuits to end the charade.
The residents of Upper Arlington have done their part. They have organized against the measure and shown consistently in the past few years that they are starting to reject the right-wing, reactionary views of the GOP junta that controls our state’s politics.
Their leaders leaders need to have the courage to follow through on that new path.
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