We’ve been telling you Kansas is a target for national voucher supporters in 2025. Here’s more proof. EdChoice, part of the well-funded national voucher lobby recently asked the Kansas Ethics Commission about whether it needs to register as a lobbyist and whether it can pay travel expenses, lodging and food and beverages for Kansas legislators to travel to its conference so they can be educated on how to promote vouchers in our state. (The answers were yes, and it can only pay for food and beverages.)

Their representative explained, “We are here to bring people together and equip them with high-quality research, data analysis, policy expertise, messaging strategies plus legal and fiscal analysis, and legal defense of enacted programs. We proudly promote educational choice as the intellectual legacy of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and economist Rose D. Friedman, original founders of our charitable nonprofit.” We dispute his assertion of “high quality” research and note that the Friedmans were proponents of abolishing public education and supported segregation academies (private schools for white students looking to avoid having their children attend newly integrated schools).

They’re coming for our schools-get in the game.

The dialogue is in the minutes of the Kansas Government Ethics Commission’s monthly meeting on Jun 26, 2024: https://ethics.kansas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/08-28-2024-Open-Materials.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawE-8UBleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHU_9XMWZk-P7_Yd62NhConCpVZTirkUmsaZ_HzNFAemNRHwDPQA-yGOlMQ_aem_1tAibu0Yz0-DJ2csXtSxmA