Endless Efforts to Undermine Public Education

Edd Doerr

Article XI, Section 10 of the Nevada constitution: “No public funds of any kind or character whatever, state, county, or municipal, shall be used for sectarian purposes.” 

But as noted in the article Nevada Taxpayers File Motion to Immediately Stop Implementation of SB 302 SB 302 proposes a voucher program that "

"uses public money for religious instruction and other religious functions and activities at religious schools, in violation of this strict constitutional prohibition. With over a century of Nevada precedent and Nevada Attorney General opinions, the motion makes clear that voucher program funds are public funds. Any pass-through bank account for funds that the state continues to own and control is a fiction that does not alter the public character of the funds."

“The Nevada taxpayers in Duncan are standing up and asking the Court to immediately block implementation of this unconstitutional program. SB 302 funds private religious indoctrination, and funds private religious schools which operate with discriminatory admissions policies, all at the expense of the existing system of public schools and public instruction. This directly contravenes the Nevada Constitution and more than 130 years of state-law precedent,” said Amy M. Rose, ACLU of Nevada legal director.

Let’s hope that the above mentioned ACLU lawsuit is successful and that the state courts are more attentive to the state constitution than the nose-thumbing Republicans who dominate the legislature, unlike the disgraceful Indiana supreme court.

These attacks on public education, church-state separation, and religious liberty have been led for decades by Republicans in state legislatures and Congress for decades. 

See Edd Doerr's column titled “Public Education under Siege” in the current issue of Free Inquiry. 

Also, Americans for Religious Liberty has been reporting and analyzing this issue for 34 years. See ARL’s web site – arlinc.org.

Republicans in their endless efforts to undermine public  education seem oblivious to the 50 years of state referenda and opinion polls showing that Americans oppose diverting public funds to sectarian and other private schools by 2 to 1.

Can Vouchers Fix Vegas’s Schools? No says Edd

(Aug 26) New York Times ran an op ed, “Can Vouchers Fix Vegas’s Schools?”, by U of Nevada English prof Brittany Bronson. Here is the response Edd Doerr  posted on line  --

Nevada's Republican-rammed-through school voucher plan clearly is out of sync with the state's constitution (Article XI, Sections 2, 9 and 10). If the Republican lawmakers had done the honorable thing and allowed the state's voters a say, they would surely have voted the voucher plan down. How do we know? Because voters in the surrounding states of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Colorado have rejected vouchers or their variants eleven (!) times by two to one margins over the years. And the 47th annual PDK/Gallup education poll released on August 23 showed opposition to vouchers nationwide by 57% to 31%. The poll showed that even Republicans are divided on vouchers 46% to 46%.

Fewer than 5% of Nevada's kids attend private schools, most of them run by churches. So the voucher plan is clearly a blatant all-out attack on public education and religious liberty, the right of citizens not to be forced by government to support religious institutions. The plan can only promote the fragmentation of the school population along religious, ideological, social class, ethnic, ability level and other lines.

Sadly, diverting public funds to private schools is now standard Republican policy nationwide, including the positions of all of the GOP presidential aspirants.

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)