Public funds come with strings. Accept them or remain private.

This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.

Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,

educated educators talking education.

It is Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,

educated educators talking education Monday morning, home room.

It's just me and Jess today, Jess. What's happening?

Oh, it has been a busy day here at Civic Media.

You've got so much to look forward to.

I cannot believe how much work all, you know, all over the weekend.

You guys have been so busy back and forth.

You were in the Madison studio last week.

Back now, when's the new Racine studio?

When are you going to be there today?

You're, I didn't, I was thinking I'm like, the background looks different.

So you are in the new studio and Racine today.

That's so cool.

I know you guys have been, you know, really, really busy,

but hey, look, home room, first thing Monday morning, Jess and Tim,

Johnny Lupinacci, guess what?

Stuck in traffic. I don't know Jess.

Does that sound like an excuse that we should honor for Dr. Johnny Lupinacci?

You know, I know that Johnny Lupinacci would be here if it was at all possible.

So you and I are going to tackle some trending news.

Are you ready?

I am ready for that trending news.

Trended on me, Jess.

Let's start with K12 dive petition to establish nation's first religious

charter school reaches Supreme Court.

The Oklahoma's St. Isador of Seville Catholic virtual school was set to open for 2024 to 25,

but it's lost its launch was blocked by the state's highest court attorneys for Oklahoma's

St. Isador of Seville Catholic virtual school filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court on Monday.

The petition asks the justices to consider whether a state violates the free exercise

clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state's publicly funded charter school

program.

It also asks whether this private religious schools curriculum and practices are considered

state action because it's free education is funded by the state.

What do we think?

Okay, let's figure this out first.

Okay, so Oklahoma granted granted the the charter school of virtual charter school

that was going to be run by the Catholic church.

So a Catholic charter school.

Yeah.

Anybody who listens right away goes, well, they can't do that as a Catholic school.

You can't have religious charter schools if the charter school is going to get state

public money, right?

And instead of end of story, end of story.

Well, not in today's world, Jess, it's not end of story because they really pushed this

in Oklahoma and in fact, at one point, a court actually said, no, hey, state of Oklahoma

because it's a charter school.

Doesn't matter that it was chartered and being overseen by the Catholic church.

It's a charter school and in Oklahoma charter schools are public schools.

So you have to give the Catholic charter school public monies.

You know, I don't think that this past is Jonathan Gurko's sniff test.

This is not past that exclusionary test that he is always talking about

because this is clearly excluding a huge percentage of the population.

It's excluding.

But again, though, remember it was ruled in favor that this could actually go forward.

It was just now that the Oklahoma Supreme Court stepped in and said, whoa, wait a minute.

No, sorry.

It's religious.

It's absolutely in line with the Catholic school, loud to have them.

Just can't put public funds to them.

End of story.

Hey, guess what, though, not end of story because the charter school private Catholic advocates

in Oklahoma said, wait a minute, though, we got one more court.

We're going to throw this to and so they thrown it up to the United States Supreme Court.

And they're asking the United States Supreme Court to step in and say,

but our religious charter school is public and we should be entitled to public funds.

Yeah, whether it's Jonathan Garcos sniff test or not, the issue here, though, is to say,

I want to put this back to the Catholic school advocates.

Do you really, really want your Catholic charter school to be public because it does

open the doors for some very intriguing possibilities?

Exactly.

And that's where you start talking about this issue dealing with curriculum very specifically

because I will get into this and say, because guess what?

Then you cannot teach in a publicly funded school.

I know you're going to say it's religious, but we don't do state endorsed religion.

So you can't then teach Catholic Catholicism and the faith that goes with that,

that typically in a Catholic school is allowed because it's a Catholic private school.

And so theology, Catholics theology would have to be taught alongside Hinduism,

Buddhism, agnosticism, isomisms, you know, all the isoms.

So no exclusionary.

So this is always to me.

It's I always want to go out to the private religious people that want public funding to say,

well, then do you want public scrutiny?

Do you want public standards?

Because if you do great, we will gladly give you public monies,

but we will now restrict what it is you can teach from the standpoint of religiosity types of points of view.

And we will also then tell you who you have to accept and who you cannot deny access to.

Why?

Why do you keep asking for public funds?

But see just the reality here is is that though they're still trying to say,

no, we don't want to follow those rules.

We do want public money, though.

In fact,

aren't you guys discriminating against us because of our religion and denying us money because we're religious?

That's a budget bank.

I know it's it's a twisted bullshit argument that continues to see more and more light today.

Now, the question is what happens if this gets to the US Supreme Court?

I like particularly when you get into the K-12 dive article.

It's probably a good chance that they will agree not to hear it.

And then it will disappear and the Oklahoma State Supreme Court's ruling that guess what?

A Catholic charter school Catholic.

So it's Catholic.

Guess what?

Charter doesn't make a public.

It's Catholic.

Right.

I mean, when Catholic is literally in the name of the school,

yes, you can't be arguing.

Oh, it's not a Catholic school.

It is absolutely a Catholic school.

Okay.

So I'm going to put a little bit of a harsh or spin on this.

I'm kind of made light of this.

But you know, you sit down and you go, what is the motivation?

What is the real motivation?

Is it really public funding?

Well, yeah, it is.

It is public funding to bail out.

Struggling Catholic schools that are not getting the private tuition

from the enrollments that they typically can get.

So this is going to actually this.

This is state funded bailout of religious education.

That's a no no.

Yeah, state funded bailout of Catholic schools.

You agree with me?

Guess what you can do?

608-557-8577.

Busted pencils mailbag.

Hey, are you out there, Catholic school graduate thinking

that you should get some public monies?

Well, do you want to indoctrinate Catholicism across the state?

Just I got to throw this one out there too on that one.

People say, what's the motivation?

Well, when you move away from maybe,

well, what if it's not bailing out,

struggling Catholic schools that need the money?

Okay.

Well, then what if it is over the top then an attempt

to religiously indoctrinate the public as well as to move away

from what they claim is indoctrination

that occurs in public schools where, of course,

our students are learning how to exist in a democracy.

They're learning how to hold contrasting views.

They're learning about difference.

They're learning about all the ways that humans are a beautifully

diverse species.

And they don't want it.

They don't want it.

They don't want it.

Indoctrination, we've said this on the live show multiple times.

Actually, we're okay with indoctrinating democracy.

But that, you know, and so yeah, guess what?

So, Catholic schools, well, the public schools indoctrinate,

yes, they do.

They indoctrinate democracy.

They indoctrinate diversity.

They indoctrinate inclusion.

Indoctrinate multi-culturalism.

When it comes to that, I know you don't like that inclusion

is a form of indoctrination.

You try to rail against it, private Catholic school people.

But come on.

Now, look, keep your religion.

Keep it close to your heart.

Keep it where you want it.

Don't bring it out in the public, though.

And ask us to bail you out either with public monies.

Or come on.

Don't ask us to be indoctrinated by your Catholic faith.

Faith, faith, Catholic faith.

I understand that there are, there are some people

who would like to see the state indoctrinating a religion.

Guess what, though, at one point,

if it is this religion this month, next month,

it might be the religion of somebody you don't like.

So when this is why I always look at this one is going,

come on.

Understand that at some point you will be on the bottom

and you will be oppressed.

Because oppressors eventually become the oppressed.

This is why we're trying to make this as smooth as we possibly can.

Right. That's why we're trying to move to a system with,

you know, as few oppressors as possible.

Right. Right.

So I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm dragging this one on too long.

Typically, Jess, I know.

Well, let's move on to another.

Okay, move on to another one, Jess.

All right. Let's hit this one quickly.

K-12 dive, three takeaways on the growth of private school choice.

Future Ed looks at eight states where 569,000 students

are participating in these programs at a cost to taxpayers of $4 billion.

In the academic year of 2023 to 24.

And you did the word be billion, billion.

If people remember Dr. Evil and his little pinky there,

billion, okay.

Yeah. So great article on the fact that we've got,

you know, to me, three really statistical takeaways.

738 million dollars was the actual cost in Arizona.

They projected $64 million.

The actual cost, $738 million.

Guess where that extra money comes from, Jess.

The public schools.

So guess what?

Funding private school choice defunds your public schools.

The other part, guess what?

69%, 66%, 68%.

What's that, Jess?

That's the number of students who were already in private schools.

So what you're telling me, Tim, is that these are students who were not taking their vouchers

and saying, yeah, you know, my public school maybe isn't the best choice for me.

I'm going to take this voucher and I'm going to go to a private school that's going to help.

These are students who were already in private schools whose families already made the choice

to send their child there.

Those are dollars that are coming directly out of public schools.

That was money that was never meant to go to a private school.

Never, ever, ever meant.

You know, and this is the one, too, where you sit there and go, okay.

So in other words, I had already sent Luke and Lacey.

Those are my kids to private schools.

I just found out that whoa, the state now says I can access a voucher.

Well, well, guess what?

You know what?

People are like, well, people are just greedy if they're doing that.

I don't know.

People are just people.

And the reality is is that, you know what?

It's like, wait, I can get a $9,000 voucher.

I know I'm spending 14 to $15,000 on my kids' tuition, but you know what?

And $8,000 voucher to help cover the cost.

It's a pretty penny.

Actually, you know, if I come into managing my money, the idea that I can get free money somewhere else,

well, then guess what?

A lot of people do that.

And that's what we're seeing when it comes to private school choice.

Is this that when you make it open to those people who already chose to send their kids to private schools,

they then don't jump into the system, pulling more money out, which is exactly then what happened in Arizona,

they budgeted $64 million for the choice and ended up costing $738 million because there were no restrictions on who could access that money.

And so thereby, the state then had a constitutional obligation to pay every parent that came forward and asked for a voucher.

Okay, so we look at this.

So defunds our public schools.

It absolutely is something most states have not budgeted for.

And so it's going to also bankrupt the state's budget.

The other part of this too is is that guess what?

We have no ability then to as a public now to declare whether or not private school choice is any better than public schools because across the multitude of private schools,

the types of an assessment assessments given the types of mandated assessments.

They're just not comparable to public schools.

And guess what?

Some of the standards this goes back to that private religious school.

Some of the standards aren't the same standards and so making comparisons, which is again, if you're putting public monies out,

the public has the right to know how that money's being spent if it's being spent.

Well, if it's effective when it comes to private school choice, our students doing better.

Well, we don't know.

And so come on.

I know people are like, this is a busted pencils, no brainer.

We know, but we want to bring it forward all the time because it's still happening.

It's still happening.

And as we go into 2024 and we're approaching two weeks into this election, actually a private school voucher universality is something one of the candidates, the Trump administration is saying they would support a national school voucher.

So this is why we continue to bring this up because vouchers hurt public schools without public schools.

Yeah, don't do democracy without democracy.

You don't have a cool country.

That would be called fascism.

And at this point now, too, let's say that the slightly orange or sometimes really orange dude.

He's a fascist.

He's a fascist, Jess.

He is a fascist.

He's a fascist.

And so here's the deal.

No, you cannot have your money to fund fascist schooling.

Public schools.

They get the money.

Democracy.

Hey, you know, that's what we're all about.

Civic media, busted pencils, democracy, public schools.

It goes together like turkey mashed potatoes and gravy.

And yeah, Jess, you reminding me too.

You want to jump in?

You want to let us know what you think about all of the trending news that happens on busted pencils.

It's 608-557-8577-608-557-8577.

Jess, you really did bust some pencils this morning, thank you.

And now it's time for your moment of zin.

What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in and who is marching outside the White House pushing for change.

Hey, stay tuned.

It's going to be a great week of busted pencils, classes and session Wednesday, first downs in Friday nights on Friday.

And keep busting pencils.

Music.

Music.

Music.