Breaking News: Louisiana Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s School Voucher Funding Scheme

From Associated Press:

Louisiana’s Supreme Court has ruled that the funding method for a private school tuition voucher program pushed through the Legislature last year by Gov. Bobby Jindal is unconstitutional.

Tuesday’s 6-1 decision upholds a state district court ruling that the state constitution forbids using money earmarked for public schools in the state’s Minimum Foundation Program to pay for private school tuition.

The Jindal administration has pushed on with the voucher program, despite the previous court rulings. Roughly 8,000 students have been approved for vouchers in the coming school year. It remains unclear how the program will be funded, now that use of the MFP money has been struck down.

More TFN Insider reports about Louisiana’s private school voucher scheme here and here.

5 thoughts on “Breaking News: Louisiana Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s School Voucher Funding Scheme

  1. I’m guessing that Gov. Jindal has some personal financial interest in the charter school industry. But we’re not supposed to know about it.

  2. So typical of these religious a$$holes, trying to take money that is for ALL the children that go to public schools and use it for religious schools. If you want your kid to go to a religious school, pay for it yourself, no public tax money should be taken and given to religious schools period!!!!

  3. Well, there goes the Southern Baptist dream of destroying public schools and replacing them with church schools that every child will be forced to attend because no more public schools are open. If the Louisiana Supreme Court can rule this way, there is little doubt that a federal court would deep-6 the whole idea of vouchers on First Amendment grounds.

    When are these old white guys ever going to figure out that they are never going to force parents to send their children to one of their Christian fundamentalist “skules.”

    Give it up!!! You people will never have the power to FORCE people to be believe and behave exactly like you do. It is not in human nature and it is not in the constitution—no matter how hard you try to warp it or carve down that square peg to fit in that round hole.

    Now, the old time Christian fundamentalists right after 1925 had it right:

    “The world is just too sinful. The Bible says that it will never get better. It will just get worse, and worse, and worse as time goes by. It has been appointed from on high since the foundation of the world. We have no power to change that fact. Therefore, we must take our sacred white families, separate ourselves and our daily dealings as much as possible from the sinful world and all the sinful people in it—which is nearly every person except us. Live life within our own faithful and insular world within our homes and at our hearths—and quietly and prayerfully wait for the Lord and his appointed end time to come.”

    Jerry Falwell and all his preacher ilk were clever deceivers who led these people astray like pied pipers when they were already on the right path stated above–lured them away—got them involved in the dirt and lies of politics, corruption, and the ways of the world.

  4. Charter schools are nothing more than private schools supported by tax dollars. The CEOs of these charters are raking in the big dollars while they pay their teachers crap wages and prohibit them from unionizing.

    One of the favorite memes of the right wing is: “You can’t solve problems by throwing money at them.” So why is that not the meme when charter schools are sucking away public funds? Well, it’s time to stop financing private schools, a/k/a charter schools, and put that money — and even more — into improving our public schools. Cutting funding for public education, as the 2011 Texas Legislature did, simply cannot improve public schools. Do the math!! Then claiming that public schools are failing students is a great absurdity.

    The voucher scheme for private schools, promoted by Republicans, is even worse. The vouchers are unlikely to cover the entire tuition, so only parents with considerable means will be able to afford the remainder for their children. That horse manure the GOP spreads about poor children having equal educational opportunities is just that — horse manure!

    I’m sick of Republicans, and I’m sick of the voters who keep electing them. What the hell are they thinking? Oh, yeah, voters who keep electing Republicans are actually not thinking.