The Freedom From Religion Foundation is disappointed that Georgia lawmakers have passed a new scheme to divert funds from public schools to unregulated private, mostly religious schools.
Gov. Brian Kemp recently signed SB 233 into law, which will force taxpayers to fund private religious education across the state. This bill disregards the lessons from other state voucher programs that these funds not only hurt public schools, but also fail to improve academic performance of students who attend voucher schools.
In the long run, voucher programs end up primarily funneling taxpayer dollars into private school bank accounts to pay for students who would have attended private schools anyway. This is especially true with the recent trend of so-called “school choice” advocates pushing for voucher programs to become universal, meaning the funds are available even to the wealthiest families who already send their children to private schools. FFRF fully expects opponents of public schools to push for universal vouchers in Georgia next.
“Private schools are by definition unaccountable to taxpayers — and no taxpayer should be forced to pay for religious instruction that they do not support,” comments FFRF Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne. “Instead, this spare $140 million that Georgia lawmakers apparently found burning a hole in their pockets should go toward helping public school students.”
Private school vouchers are perhaps the biggest current threat to the constitutional separation between state and church in the United States. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is committed to raising awareness on the issue and supporting the access of all students to strong, secular public schools.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 600 members and a chapter in Georgia. FFRF’s purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
