Ohio lawmakers are floating a new limit on who can tap state-funded private school vouchers, and they picked a pretty eye-popping number. A bipartisan bill at the Statehouse would cut off new EdChoice expansion scholarships for families reporting more than $500,000 in federal adjusted gross income. House Bill 643 is pitched as a way to keep a rapidly growing program from turning into a luxury subsidy. Backers call it a targeted fix. Critics are not impressed.
What the bill would do
House Bill 643 would bar new EdChoice expansion scholarships for families earning above $500,000 in federal adjusted gross income, starting with the 2026–27 school year, according to the Ohio Legislature. Introduced in January, the proposal lists Reps. Justin Pizzulli (R) and Anita Somani (D) as primary sponsors and are parked in the House Education Committee. Supporters say the income cap would steer taxpayer dollars toward families who need the help more while slowing the program’s cost spiral.
Critics call it window dressing
The half-million threshold has already drawn fire from education advocates and local commentators, who argue that number still leaves plenty of room for affluent families to cash in. One host said an income limit “should be closer to $150,000,” and Lisa Garvin warned that “to save the voucher, we need to make it more fair, more transparent, and more accountable.” That pushback and broader skepticism were reported by Cleveland.com.
By the numbers
Ohio’s voucher system now eats up roughly a billion dollars in state spending each year, a surge critics and some officials cite as a central reason they want guardrails, according to WVXU. State summaries show lawmakers’ 2023 budget expansion dramatically widened eligibility for the EdChoice Expansion scholarship, making most K–12 students eligible and significantly boosting scholarship amounts, as noted by EdChoice. Local reporting, after combing through the state data, concluded the expanded program largely became a taxpayer subsidy for students who were already enrolled in private schools, a pattern documented in Cleveland-area coverage now cited around the state, per Cleveland.com.
Politics and pocketbook worries
Supporters frame the proposed cap as a middle-ground fix, but school officials and some lawmakers outside Ohio’s big cities are watching the bottom line and growing uneasy about how voucher payouts are reshaping local budgets and tax levies. School boards and rural legislators are tracking the “fiscal fallout” as voucher dollars flow out of district coffers and into private schools, according to the Dayton Daily News. For many observers, the core question is whether a half-million-dollar cutoff meaningfully changes how public money is distributed, or whether it mostly polishes the program’s image while leaving its basic structure intact.
Legal backdrop
All of this is playing out while the voucher system itself is under a legal cloud. On June 24, 2025, a Franklin County judge ruled the EdChoice scholarship program unconstitutional, a decision the state quickly appealed. The ruling was stayed so scholarships could continue while the litigation plays out. In her opinion, Judge Jaiza Page wrote that the state “may not fund private schools at the expense of public schools,” language that has become central in coverage of the ruling and the state’s appeal, as reported by the Statehouse News Bureau and WOUB.
What to watch next
H.B. 643 remains in the House Education Committee, and sponsors say the income cap would kick in for the 2026–27 school year if the bill clears the legislature and is signed into law. In reality, its impact might be blunted or reshaped by the ongoing court fight over whether the program itself passes constitutional muster. For now, anyone tracking the issue will want to watch both the committee schedule and the voucher case on appeal to see whether lawmakers’ tweak actually takes effect or gets overtaken by the courts, according to the bill’s status page from the Ohio Legislature.
