The teachers’ union called the Wyoming Education Association sued the state this month over its new Steamboat Scholarship program.
And now homeschoolers or potential private schoolers will not receive their $7,000 in education funding as promised for at least two weeks, if ever – since the District Court judge in Cheyenne held that maintaining the status quo meant keeping the money in government “coffers” instead of in the hands of students.
While I understand that the program is new, it is an interesting concept to conclude that the money is more at home in a government account than helping students who have been approved to use it. Kids with approved applications were already told they’d receive these funds.
So, this decision will harm students who are equally entitled to state constitutional guarantee of an equally funded education.
The challengers of the new school choice program allege that it is unconstitutional.
One argument asserts that LGBTQ+ kids may not be accepted into some private schools, so the law is not equal.
Seems like a hypothetical stretch to me, but so far, the judge has given them what they’ve asked for – a complete halt to the lawfully passed program.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already spoken on the constitutionality of these programs in Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue:
“Any Establishment Clause objection to the scholarship program here is particularly unavailing because the government support makes its way to religious schools only as a result of Montanans independently choosing to spend their scholarships at such schools.”
The logic is quite simple. Public dollars are going to public students. The school that the student chooses is largely irrelevant because each child has the equal opportunity to the right to an education of his or her choice, and one that best fits their needs. Whether the child chooses public school, Catholic school, or homeschool – they have an equal right to apply for the scholarship to use it on an educational expense of their choosing.
Providing kids with more options, even when their families cannot afford it, appears to enhance the constitutional directive that we make education equally available to all. Why should a kid be trapped in a failing public school simply because they live on the wrong side of town?
In a Wyoming courtroom, with the brush of a pen, that opportunity was denied to that child.
It is notable that this is the same education choice bill that garnered a tweet of support from Donald J. Trump.
Despite a $2 billion budget, only 30% of Wyoming eighth graders can read or do math at their grade level. The average private tuition in Wyoming is $10,500 while it costs over $20,000 per public to educate in a public-school setting.
If this were the private sector, the system would have been kicked long ago.
So, here’s your education, on education choice: The money belongs to the kid, not the government.
To hold otherwise is contrary to the very design of our government. The government is a means to serve the citizen, not the other way around.
Some of us don’t want your “uniform” sub-par education experience. Or perhaps we’d like a home education free from ideologues trying to influence our children with their wacky ideas about how the world should spin round?
The plaintiffs in the WEA lawsuit play the victim.
They decry the scholarship with fundamental critique of how the capitalist system has this inherent tendency toward inequality and exploitation.
How very Marxist.
Advocating for a more “equitable” distribution of the wealth and resources would aim to eliminate class divisions and oppression they decry. Sound familiar? Be careful with arguments that seek to make you emotional: they are designed to manipulate you into thinking that the benefit of the collective always outweighs the God-given right of one individual’s divine law.
That is a scary premise, and one from which the demise of America could germinate.
While WEA President Kim Amen said “Public dollars belong in public schools,” I would challenge that the public funds belong to the child whom the dollars are intended to educate.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
