As students, we are too young to vote but not speak out against Amendment 2

On this Election Day, Kentucky voters will decide Amendment 2. If adopted, the measure would amend the state constitution and give lawmakers the power to create an alternative school financing system for private school students, paid for by public taxes. Kentucky is one of three states that include vouchers on the ballot. Much has been said about the negative impact of Amendment 2 on teachers, school staff, and communities. However, passage of the amendment would also have a profound impact on the experience of Kentucky students. That’s why, regardless of whether we are old enough to vote, we speak out about it.

We are members of the Kentucky Student Voice Team, an independent, youth-led organization that promotes more equitable, democratic schools through educational research, policy and storytelling. Our members come from across the Commonwealth and we are completely selective.

This month, among other awareness-raising activities, we hosted an Amendment 2 Myth Bus Tour to share information about how the proposed constitutional amendment affects us. At each stop, in the hope that students would be more focused on public conversations about our schools, we shared both statistics and stories from our own experiences.

Our pop-up lectures began with Peter Jefferson, who talked about how Amendment 2 “makes the difference between new, modern classrooms with well-paid teachers who support students beyond the classroom, and a stagnant public school system struggling to meet basic needs.” Peter shared how his Lexington High School was finally approved for renovation after more than 60 years in its current facilities and how, with cuts expected to be more than 8% of his district’s current budget due to the amendment, the renovation could be indefinitely delayed.

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Tragic impact on rural communities

While the effects of vouchers on Peter’s city school system are troubling enough, the impact of vouchers on rural communities like Ivy Litton in eastern Kentucky would be even more dire. nearly 37% of public school students live in rural areasand these are places where there are almost no private schools. This is because, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: more than half of all private schools in the commonwealth are concentrated in just three Kentucky counties.

According to Ivy, this raises real concerns about threats to the programs most sensitive to budget cuts and most important to enriching her education. “Many of the arts and humanities programs, like speech and theater, that shaped me and provided me with a home away from home rely on funding that this amendment took away from us,” Ivy said.

School vouchers and segregation

As one of the few students of color in her predominantly white school, Luisa Sanchez worries even more evidence from other countries showing how vouchers can lead to increased racial segregation in schools. Luisa asserted that everyone who appreciates the value of exposure to multicultural classrooms should also be concerned.

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“Learning about diverse cultures from people firsthand is something that academics cannot teach, but is essential in our school environments,” Luisa said. “How else can we prepare young people to navigate our increasingly global world?”

As you can imagine, school vouchers can also lead to other types of segregation. Milo Osbourn is one of more than 105,000 students with disabilities in Kentucky. According to Milo, the promise of vouchers offers nothing to students like them because private schools in Kentucky are not required to provide special services and are not held to the same anti-discrimination standards. “These services are an essential part of ensuring the success of students with disabilities. A voucher program would not serve students like me, but continuing to fund public schools would,” Milo said.

Teachers threatened by Amendment 2?

Even beyond issues of resources and equity, the passage of Amendment 2 goes to the heart of the classroom experience – teaching itself. The embodiment of this reality is Georgie Farmer, an aspiring educator who comes from a full family. Georgie shared research showing that if Kentucky adopts a Florida-style voucher program, ours will public schools would lose thousands of teaching jobsincluding the equivalent of all local certified middle school staff in the small suburban district of Georgie alone. “We should invest in teacher retention and recruitment so that future and current teachers like me get the support they need,” Georgie said. “Whether it’s cutting teacher salaries, cutting transportation budgets, or continually neglecting outdated teaching materials in the classroom, vouchers require trade-offs. As a proud public school student and one day a teacher myself, I do not want to agree to such a transaction.” For students like Peter, Ivy, Luisa, Milo and Georgie, and the more than 670,000 other Kentucky K-12 students, Amendment 2 provides an opportunity to decide whether and how we choose to hold Kentucky funded schools accountable by taxpayers, before society. And while it’s true that most of us are too young to vote on November 5, we hope that we at least have enough informed friends to do so on our behalf.

Abigail Ladwig of Owensboro High School, Addison Lowry of DuPont Manual High School and Ellen Mueller of Scott County High School are members of the Kentucky Student Voice Team.

This article originally appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal: Opinion: Kentucky students speak out against Amendment 2