This Election Day, Kentucky voters will decide on Amendment 2. If passed, the measure would change the state constitution and give legislators the authority to create an alternate system of school funding for private school students paid for by public tax dollars. Kentucky is one of three states with vouchers on the ballot.

Much has already been said about how Amendment 2 would negatively impact educators, school staff, and communities. But the amendment’s passage would also profoundly affect the experiences of Kentucky students. That’s why regardless of whether we’re old enough to vote, we’re speaking out about it.

We are members of the Kentucky Student Voice Team, an independent youth-led organization that promotes more just, democratic schools through education research, policy and storytelling. Our members hail from across the commonwealth, and we are entirely self-selective.

This month, and among other awareness-raising activities, we organized an Amendment 2 Myth Bus Tour to share information about how the proposed constitutional change would impact us. At each stop and in the hopes of ensuring students are more centered in the public conversations about our schools, we shared both statistics and stories from our own lived experiences.

Our pop-up teach-ins began with Peter Jefferson, who talked about how Amendment 2 “is the difference between new modern classrooms with well-paid teachers who support students beyond the classroom and a stagnant public school system fighting for basic necessities.” Peter told of how his Lexington high school was finally approved for renovation after over 60 years in the current facilities, and how, with cuts predicted at over 8% of his district’s current budget brought on by the amendment, the renovation could be delayed indefinitely.

While the effects of vouchers in Peter’s urban school system are alarming enough, the impact of vouchers on rural communities like Ivy Litton’s in Eastern Kentucky would be even more dire. In Kentucky, nearly 37% of public school students live in a rural area, and those are places where private schools scarcely exist at all. That’s because according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, more than half of all of the commonwealth’s private schools are concentrated in just three Kentucky counties.

For Ivy, that raises real concerns about the threat to the types of programs most sensitive to budget cuts and most important to her own education enrichment. “Many of the arts and humanities programs such as speech and theater that have shaped me and provided me with a home away from home rely on the funding that this amendment would take from us,” Ivy said.

As one of a handful of students of color in her predominantly white school, Luisa Sanchez is additionally worried about evidence from other states 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 be concerned too.

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

As you might imagine, school vouchers can lead to other types of segregation too. Milo Osbourn is one of over 105,000 Kentucky students living with a disability. For Milo, the promise of vouchers offers nothing to students like themselves as Kentucky’s private schools are not required to provide special services and are not held to the same anti-discrimination standards.

“These services are a vital part of ensuring the success of disabled students. A voucher program would not serve students like me, but continuing to fund public schools will,” Milo said.

Even beyond issues of resources and equity, the passage of Amendment 2 cuts to the heart of the classroom experience–teaching itself. This reality is embodied by Georgie Farmer, an aspiring educator who comes from a whole family of them. Georgie shared research showing that if Kentucky adopted a Florida-style voucher program, our public schools would stand to lose thousands of educator jobs, including the equivalent of all local certified middle school staff in Georgie’s small suburban district alone.

“We should be investing in educator retention and recruitment so future and current educators like me have the support we need,” Georgie said. “Whether it’s reducing teacher pay, cuts to the transportation budget, or continued neglect of outdated classroom instructional materials, vouchers require tradeoffs. As a proud student of a public school and one day, a public school teacher myself, that’s a trade I am not willing to make.”

For students like Peter, Ivy, Luisa, Milo, and Georgie and for more than 670,000 other Kentucky K-12 students, Amendment 2 represents a chance to decide whether and how we choose to keep Kentucky’s taxpayer-supported schools accountable to the public. And while it’s true that most of us are too young to weigh in at the ballot box on Nov. 5, we are holding out hope that we at least have enough informed friends who will on our behalf.

Header image: Taken on October 13th, 2024 by Eva Alcaraz-Monje

This op-ed was originally published in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

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