LIBERTY — Another Trumbull County school district is joining a lawsuit pushing back against a program many fear would harm public schools.

The Liberty Board of Education unanimously approved entering the Vouchers Hurt Ohio litigation at its meeting Monday, joining nearly 300 public school districts across Ohio, including several others in Trumbull and Mahoning counties.

The resolution states that EdChoice Vouchers, funded through the state from designated appropriation line items and paid to public schools, diminish the funding and educational opportunities in school districts and educational service centers.

Taking that money from funds available to “authentic public education” further reduces the money available to support additional needs of students classified as minorities, having disabilities or being in poverty, it adds.

The resolution states there’s a $2 fee per district student to join the lawsuit.

Board President David Malone said they’ve already heard presentations about the case, referring to when a township resident — Julia Catchpole — expressed concern that the vouchers would “endanger” public schools at a December meeting.

Catchpole, a former teacher who has lived in Liberty since the 1980s, told the board she believes private schools need to be paid for by the people and families who seek to use them, adding that they don’t use taxpayer funds to pave private roads.

The amount of money that follows a student in Liberty’s school system is $5,137, according to Catchpole’s presentation. For high school students in the district with a voucher, the amount increases by $3,270 per student, she added.

The Ohio Ed Expansion Voucher Program provided $1 billion in taxpayer dollars for tuition at private schools across five scholarship programs in the 2023-24 school year.

Multiple school districts in Trumbull County — Bristol, Girard, Hubbard, LaBrae, Lakeview, Lordstown, Mathews, Howland and Niles — are among the 300 districts involved in the lawsuit. Boardman, Canfield, Poland, South Range, Struthers, Youngstown and West Branch are the districts in Mahoning County involved so far.

The case was filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

The trial originally was scheduled for Nov. 4 to be heard before Judge Jaiza Page. She postponed it until 2025 at an Oct. 2 pretrial hearing, giving more school districts time to sign onto the suit.

In other action, the board:

• Reaffirmed its commitment to the district’s interdistrict open enrollment policy. The policy is reviewed annually to assess its impact and effectiveness to ensure it aligns with the district’s goals and community needs.

• Approved family and medical leave for high school secretary Adrienne Stark from Jan. 14 to March 3. The board also accepted Stark’s resignation effective July 1, after 30 years with the district.

• Approved extending family and medical leave for Christin White until Feb. 26.

• Approved family and medical leave for Amanda Sylvester from April 28 to May 30.

• Approved the district entering an agreement with Niles-based AARIS Therapy Group to provide supplemental psychological testing to students in need of an evaluation team report, the first step in the process of identifying a disability and creating an individualized education program. It is a one-year term, from Feb. 1 to June 30, with a max budget of $5,000.

• Approved adopting Open Up Resources’s “Bookworms” as the district’s kindergarten to second-grade curriculum and McGraw Hill’s “Wonders” as its grades three to six curriculum. They are both six-year contracts, costing $111,270 and $88,843, respectively.