It is time once again to celebrate Ohio students during National School Choice Week! 

This annual celebration highlights the growing opportunities for families to choose the elementary and secondary education that best fits their needs.

Thanks to the leadership of Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, Ohio’s most extensive voucher program, EdChoice, is now universally available to every child, in every family, in every Ohio community. Ohio’s five voucher programs now help more than 150,000 students, and its charter schools teach more than 112,000 students. 

As The Buckeye Institute has recommended, state leaders should continue improving on Ohio’s education success stories by pursuing the following reforms:

1. Support Disadvantaged Students: Public district and charter schools receive additional disadvantaged pupil impact aid (DPIA) for economically challenged students, but EdChoice recipients do not. Including DPIA funding in voucher programs would help level the playing field and relieve financial burdens for more families seeking alternative education providers.
2. Reform Student Transportation: Some school districts flout statutory requirements to bus students attending non-district schools. State leaders should close loopholes in the mandates and ensure that districts meet their obligations. Moving toward regional transportation systems that will transport and serve all students would help. 
3. Facilitate Access to Facilities: Charter schools could often acquire and repurpose unused district school buildings, but districts in some cases have demolished discarded facilities rather than sell them. Strengthening laws to prevent such practices would help charter schools expand and accommodate more students.
4. Innovative Financing for Expansion: Ohio should adopt creative financing options for non-district schools, such as revolving loan programs and low-cost state-linked deposits, to help schools expand and further support infrastructure development.

National School Choice Week is a great reminder of Ohio’s school choice legacy and the role it played in launching one of the country’s first voucher programs in 1996, and culminating in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that affirmed the constitutionality of voucher programs. Ever since then, The Buckeye Institute and state coalition partners have championed school choice and fought hard to put students and families first. Commonsense reforms can continue those efforts and ensure that every child in the state can attend their school of choice.

Greg R. Lawson is a research fellow at The Buckeye Institute.