The liberal Thomas Suddes pulls no punches in his column today. It is worth a read:

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission, however, if a parent had chosen to withdraw a special-education child from the family’s district, the district might have experienced a decrease in state aid for that student. But it would no longer incur the costs of educating that student - costs, the LSC might have added, that school superintendents sometimes gripe about.

Moreover, the number of vouchers was limited to three per 100 special-education pupils, and a voucher’s value was capped at $20,000.

Strickland also vetoed another form of school choice, to allow Cuyahoga County school boards to form a Special Services District. In turn, the district’s voters could have chosen - or not - to tax themselves to partner their schools with Bellefaire, the 139-year-old children’s philanthropy founded by Greater Cleveland’s Jewish community. The idea was to offer parents more special-ed and behavioral-health options.

Strickland wrote that he killed the idea because of its “unknown” impact. The veto, in contrast, had a known impact: It ticked off some prominent Greater Clevelanders.

If Strickland truly does object to giving state aid to Ohio children enrolled in private schools, that horse galloped out of the barn 42 years ago this month, when the General Assembly enacted the 1965 “fair bus bill,” which authorized pupils enrolled in private schools to ride public schools’ buses.

Likewise, Ohio’s first one-person, one-vote legislature, in 1967, enacted Ohio’s “auxiliary services” program for pupils in private schools - a program no Democratic governor has tried to roll back. Laws authorizing pilot voucher schools in Cleveland (1995) and charter schools in Ohio (1997) followed.

In truth, Strickland’s veto of special-education vouchers masked his powerlessness to block other forms of school choice in Ohio. In his March 14 State of the State speech, Strickland delighted Democrats and the public-school monopoly by calling for a moratorium on new charter schools and for limiting Ohio school-choice vouchers to Cleveland, rather than continuing their statewide expansion.

Still, every Democrat in the legislature voted “yes” on a budget that did neither - and which also offered special-ed parents a voucher pilot. That made that voucher plan the one target on Strickland’s shooting range. Yet predictable though it was, that line-item veto told Ohio parents that Republicans are more likely to empower them than a governor who belongs to the party of choice on abortion - but not on schooling.

Maybe Strickland’s pro-abortion and anti-school choice stances aren’t so paradoxical. It could be that Gov. Ted is giving poor parents a chance to abort their children so they can escape the horrors of inner-city schools, using the only method teacher unions approve of.

And its so refreshing to hear a leftist finally argue that when Democrats complain that “charter and voucher schools drain money from public schools”, they also drain students, which reduces the financial burden of public schools. Unions have a well-polished pr machine that will cry about having to make cut-backs- As if they shouldn’t have to spend less money and fire teachers when they have fewer students to educate.