JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the debate over using school voucher programs to pay tuition at religious schools with taxpayer dollars, then the effect on students of gun violence just outside school walls.

WOMAN: We found 9,000 shootings in your school that were in small towns and thousands of shootings even in rural areas.

So really, there's kind of nowhere you can go to avoid this phenomenon.

JOHN YANG: And how climate change is affecting family planning and reproductive health in Bangladesh.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening, I'm John Yang.

Voters in Iran will head back to the polls next week in Friday's balloting to choose a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed last month in a helicopter crash.

Three candidates split the hard line vote that allowed a reform candidate to take first place but shorter the majority he needed to win.

Many voters said they're dissatisfied with the choices, but said it's still important to cast a ballot.

ATIYEH ALIZADE, Voter (through translator): The young generation has requests on economic, cultural and social issues.

Implementing these requests isn't difficult, but there's a lack of attention towards them, particularly towards the youth.

HORRIA FALLAHI, Voter (through translator): I realized I can defend my country by voting so I chose to vote.

JOHN YANG: Friday's voter turnout was the lowest in the country's history.

The run off is set for next Friday.

10 Ukrainian civilians are returning home tonight thanks in parts of the Vatican.

Russia had held them in Annex portions of the country for years some since before the full scale invasion two years ago.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said mediation by the Vatican led to the release of the prisoners to include to Catholic priests.

Today, Pope Francis gave thanks but said he's filled with sorrow for those still in captivity.

Elsewhere in the country, at least 12 people were killed and by an airstrike, as Russia targets villages along the front line.

This is rescue efforts can continue in the city of Dnipro where a striker destroyed an apartment building.

One man is dead and another suspect on the run after an officer guarding the Israeli embassy in Serbia was shot with an arrow.

Local media say the man approached the officer asking for directions before pulling out a crossbow.

The officer shot and killed the attacker before being rushed to a hospital for surgery.

Serbian and Israeli officials are calling it an act of terror.

This morning, an asteroid the size of a skyscraper passed between the Earth and the Moon.

It came within 180,000 miles of Earth that's about three quarters of the distance to the moon.

Scientists say there was no chance that we hit the Earth and if you missed it, there's still a chance to spot it tonight after sunset.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, the life changing effect of gun violence just beyond school grounds.

And how climate change is altering family planning in Bangladesh.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: This week the debate over religion and publicly supported schools has been playing out in Oklahoma.

The State School Superintendent mandated that public schools teach the Bible and 10 Commandments.

Days before, the state Supreme Court blocked what would have been the nation's first religious charter school.

While the Supreme Court has been opening the door wider for public money to flow into religious schools, a lot is already going through school voucher programs.

A Washington Post analysis concluded that nationwide, the vast majority of school voucher money is going to religious schools.

We get two perspectives on this.

Robert Enlow is president of CEO of EdChoice, a nonprofit school voucher advocacy group.

And Richard Katskee is the director of Duke University's Appellate Litigation Clinic and the former vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Richard, let me start with you.

Should money from public school voucher programs be able to go to private religious schools?

RICHARD KATSKEE, Duke University School of Law: There are all sorts of problems with money going to private schools.

One of the big ones is that when money goes to private religious schools, those schools and by the way, all private schools that take vouchers can pick and choose which students they will allow to attend.

They won't serve kids with disabilities, because they're more expensive to go there.

They won't serve kids of different faiths.

They'll make the kids and the families sign statements of faith and agree to live according to them.

If you have an LGBTQ student, or a student whose parents are a same sex couple, the schools can say we don't want your kind here, we won't let you do that.

It's really about schools making choices not about parents making choices.

JOHN YANG: Robert Enlow, schools making choices rather than parents making choices.

What do you what do you say to that?

ROBERT ENLOW, CEO, EdChoice: What we know in history right now around America is that the courts have said that no dollar crosses the Rubicon of a private school without the truly private choice of a family.

So it's families who are choosing these options.

And here are the options they're choosing.

In Indiana and the school voucher program, more than half the kids who are attending Catholic schools are non-Catholic.

In Florida, the way they have their program with 700 new private schools has started since the beginning of the program, if you're Jewish, if you're Catholic, if you're progressive, if you want to go to the Albert Einstein Academy, which is specifically for children with LGBTQ backgrounds, or if your special needs they have special needs schools that are starting up, the vast majority of the programs and voucher programs right now, about 15 of them are specifically set up for Special Needs families.

And so, what we're finding with choice programs in America is the pluralism is actually working families are getting to choose options that are working for them.

And that's the schools that they're choosing.

It's not school choice by the schools.

It's school choice by the parents.

And the last thing I would add is, you know, our traditional schools right now, they pick and choose by a situation called economic segregation.

If you can afford a house, then you can choose.

And we also know that there are tons of magnet schools.

So the concept of choice in which schools choose is much more complex.

But we know from school choice programs right now that families are choosing, and over a million and a million of them are doing so right now.

JOHN YANG: People talk about school vouchers, money going to religious schools as public money going to religious schools.

Do you see it as public money?

Or do you see it once it gets in the parents hands as their money?

RICHARD ENLOW: So I think as taxpayers, we have decided that we want to fund the education of the public.

I think for too long, we've said we're going to fund the education on public but only through a government run school system.

What's happening now across America is we say we believe in the public funding of education, but letting parents choose where they spend those dollars.

So that's what's happening with it's why it's growing so much.

That's why it's gone from 500,000 in 2019 to a million now.

That's why there's 75 programs operating in 33 states.

And it's why out of the 52 legal cases for school choice at state level, 47 have been ruled in favor of school choice.

So, the fact is we're wanting to say that public funds, the taxpayer funds should go to families to make truly private choices, much like they do in higher ed and much like they do for a host of other government programs.

JOHN YANG: Richard, do you have any First Amendment Establishment Clause concerns about this about these voucher funds going to private religious schools?

RICHARD KATSKEE: Sure.

So look, the Supreme Court has said that if you have a system of True Private choice that where there are actually real options for people, then the money going to the parents and turning around and using it at a private religious school doesn't cause a federal constitutional problem might well cause state constitutional problems.

But it's also the case that the Supreme Court premised that idea on there being real options for everybody.

My family is Jewish, if I live in a community where there aren't any Jewish schools, yeah, sure.

Robert is right that I could send my kids to a Catholic school to get a Catholic education or a Baptist School to get a Baptist education.

But that's not really a reasonable choice for most people.

It's also a funny thing to talk about the way that the public is hungry for these programs when school vouchers have been on ballot initiatives going all the way back to about 1972.

And not a single time has the public ever voted in favor of a voucher program.

Right now in Nebraska, they put it into tuition tax credit program last year, the legislature, so the people, the public actually rose up and got the signatures to put a ballot measure for the state election to ask the question, should we get rid of that program?

The legislature, which gets a ton of money from billionaires pushing voucher agendas, turned around and made little niggling changes to the statutes so that they could say, oh, now it's not the same statute.

So you can't challenge it.

You can't bring it up in a ballot initiative.

This isn't about the public.

This is about billionaires financing an agenda that includes defunding and deconstructing taking apart the public schools and pushing a particular religious agenda that just doesn't include most Americans.

JOHN YANG: Robert, respond to that, not about the public.

It's about other agendas.

ROBERT ENLOW: So in Arizona, when the ESA Program, Education Savings Account Program passed, and everyone is then free to choose, the opponents of school choice tried to put it on the ballot to get rid of it, they failed in their attempt to do so.

And the program has grown dramatically.

What I think is most important about the potential for school choice.

And what we're seeing in places like Florida and Arizona, is you can start new schools, this incredible growth of micro schools, for example, is happening, and it's mostly non-religious, right.

So what we're finding is in school choice states that are mature like Indiana, like Arizona, like Ohio, and other places, you're beginning to see new schools start.

And that's the point, family's having more options, and more freedom to choose.

And that's what we're seeing across the country.

And we'll find out in the fall if Nebraska, and Kentucky actually show that the public can pass a referendum.

JOHN YANG: After the Supreme Court ruled that the main tuition program could not exclude religious schools, as I understand a main started using their human rights law that all schools have certain non-discrimination levels, and that if you do discriminate, you can't participate, which did knock out some of the religious, private schools.

What do you think about that?

ROBERT ENLOW: So most school choice programs already follow the title of the non-discrimination title of the U.S. Supreme Court, right?

So if you look at the laws that are created around the country, you'll see non-discrimination clauses in them across the board.

And so most private schools are already required to follow federal jurisprudence, and they do.

And if they don't, then they generally don't participate in the program.

And what I think it's important to remember here is its state legislators who are voted in by the public that are making these determinations.

And this is where the public is supporting it, because they're supporting it by hiring their state legislator to do these bills.

JOHN YANG: Robert, Richard, I'm afraid we're out of time.

We got to leave it there.

Thank you both very much.

RICHARD KATSKEE: Thank you.

ROBERT ENLOW: Thanks for having me.

JOHN YANG: This week, the surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis.

He cited the estimated 50,000 Americans who die every year in gun related incidents.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 8,200 gun deaths so far this year, nearly 700 of them children and teens.

With school shootings on the rise over the past few decades, children and parents are increasingly worried about the safety inside the classroom.

But as William Brangham tells us, a new analysis finds that more and more incidents of gun violence are happening just beyond school walls.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: From 2014 to 2023, communities across the country saw more than 188,000 shootings within 500 yards of a school, that is an average of 57 shootings per day.

This comes from a new analysis done by the Trace, which is a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence, analyzing data from almost 150,000 public and private schools.

The Trace found that just last year, 6 million kids had a shooting occur near their school.

Olga Pierce is one of the journalists who did this analysis.

Olga, thank you so much for being here and sharing this really tremendous piece of reporting with us.

When we think about school shootings.

I think most people think of the massacres that happened Newtown, Uvalde, Columbine, et cetera.

But you guys chose to broaden the lens and look at shootings outsides of schools.

Why that focus?

OLGA PIERCE, The Trace: Obviously, school shootings inside the school building are traumatic and dramatic events, and they deserve our attention.

But those are very rare compared to the frequency of shootings we found around schools.

And something we had heard anecdotally from teachers and our reporting was, you know, I wish that we could take some of this attention and these resources were taking to prepare for shootings in the school and devote them to protecting kids outside the school building.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mentioned some of your findings that how millions of kids go to schools where a shooting happened nearby in just one year.

I mean, two of my own kids fall into that same exact category.

What else did you find in your reporting?

OLGA PIERCE: We were interested in the geographic distribution of schools.

And the first thing we found is that the schools that experienced this the most are in the places you would expect.

So places like Chicago and Philadelphia that have well documented gun violence problems, a thing that really surprised us was how frequent these shootings are outside the places you would expect.

So we found about 40,000 shootings that were adjacent to suburban schools.

We found 9,000 shootings near schools that were in small towns and thousands of shootings, even in rural areas.

So really, there's kind of nowhere you can go to avoid this phenomenon.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Separate from this really horrifying data that you guys are digging up.

What were some of the personal stories that you heard from these communities.

OLGA PIERCE: One of the saddest stories we heard was from a middle schooler in Philadelphia, who said that she's afraid to sit next to the window and her classroom because she has so frequently heard gunshots outside the building and heard screaming and imagine trying to learn if that's your reality, if you're just a middle schooler.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, tell us a little bit more about that.

What does the research indicate about even though you're not directly involved in the shooting, you're not the perpetrator or the victim or even necessarily know the victims.

What does this pervasive violence in the community do to kids?

OLGA PIERCE: We know first of all, that it harms learning outcomes.

So kids who are exposed to violence, even things like memorials on the street that we see, tend to have lower test scores, for example.

So it's just hard to focus and hard for a brain to develop normally, when there's exposure to this.

On top of that, you know, people told us that what often gets interpreted as behavioral issues is actually just a really normal response to seeing violence all around you all the time.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you are reporting this and talking with parents did -- were parents aware of this?

I mean, was this something that they were cognizant that was going on in their communities that they feel that their children were safe at school?

OLGA PIERCE: So in some communities, there have been really high profile incidents, like students getting shots, leaving the school building, for example, and I think those parents are in general aware.

But one thing we did find in our reporting is that schools often are not great about communicating to parents when there is an incident.

So I would recommend any parents who doesn't know to maybe initiate a conversation, and actually in our story, if you go to our website, there's a tool where you can look up any school, which could help with that conversation.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And what kind of response did you hear from local officials in school officials are given these are things happening outside of the school walls, but our school officials are aware of this and trying to take measures to help protect kids.

OLGA PIERCE: Yeah, so we went to a school in Philadelphia, that was one of the most effective schools and they had done things like put bulletproof blankets and the windows, no adult was allowed in the school, not even parents kids have to be brought outside.

So obviously, there things the school can do, but the real long term solution is to reduce the frequency of gun violence everywhere.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is Olga Pierce, reporter for The Trace, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.

OLGA PIERCE: Thanks so much.

JOHN YANG: Few places in the world are suffering more from the effects of climate change than Bangladesh.

Most of the country which is slightly smaller than Iowa, is a flat plane no higher than about 50 feet above sea level.

That makes it vulnerable to the sort of severe flooding that's now affecting more than 2 million people after weeks of monsoon rains.

And now there's another effect.

Women are changing the way they think about having children.

Sally Dijkerman is a senior researcher for Ipas, which is a reproductive justice organization.

Sally explain to us how these effects of climate change are affecting women's health and Bangladesh and especially women's reproductive health.

SALLY DIJKERMAN, Senior Researcher, Ipas: Yeah, thank you for that question.

So what we found in our research along the Bay of Bengal and these communities that have been really hit hard by cyclones, is that the climate crisis is impacting everyone but certain groups, especially women and girls, are feeling those impacts disproportionately and that includes direct impacts on their and reproductive health outcomes for instance experiencing miscarriage, pregnancy complications and premature labor during these intense storms and flooding.

A lot of women have to go to the cyclone centers where they shelter during the storms.

And there's not nurses and doctors, medical supplies or even sanitation materials for those women who do go into labor, which is quite common.

And so they have to give birth in these unsanitary conditions without a healthcare professional present.

JOHN YANG: And how is this affecting their decisions to have children?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: Yeah, so women are facing, you know, the difficulty of having to evacuate and putting their families before their own health and well-being.

So for instance, women traditionally are the caregivers in this context.

So they have to make sure that their children and elderly people and people with disabilities in their community evacuate first, which means sometimes they are the last ones to be thinking about their own safety.

And so what they see is that other pregnant women are going or are experiencing prematurity, pregnancy complications, stillbirth and miscarriage during these cyclones.

And it's scary for them.

And so they think, well, you know, I'm not ready to have a child when there's so much instability and these extreme weather events happening.

But then there's also the other side of that, where one woman even talked in our research even talked about how she wanted to have more children to protect against potential childlessness.

In the case of her child being killed during one of these storms, because children are also very vulnerable during evacuation.

JOHN YANG: Has there been a marked difference in child mortality?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: So child mortality linked directly to these storms is something that's still being researched.

You know, the point here really is that women and girls, including youth, are feeling those impacts disproportionately to other people in the community.

And so it really is causing them to reconsider when they have children, and how many they how many children they have.

JOHN YANG: What other effects are there of these, these effects of climate change how they're affecting life in Bangladesh?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: So in in Bangladesh, and in all nine countries where we've done this research, we're finding direct links between the conditions caused by the climate crisis and increases in child marriage.

So when the climate change undermines the economic sectors like agriculture, there's increased economic instability and crisis in these families.

And so women told me that child marriage marrying off one's daughters is being used as a coping mechanism, both to receive additional money from dowry payments, and also to have less one less mouths to feed.

JOHN YANG: And is there also a connection or an effect with violence against women?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: Yeah, so violence is increasing for two reasons.

First, this economic instability causes so much stress in the family, and that leads to more intimate partner violence.

But also women and especially young girls talked about how in cyclone centers in Bangladesh, where they're sheltering from storms, there is really poor security, poor lighting, and lack of separate spaces and toilets for men and women.

And so these toilets, and these spaces are a hotbed for sexual harassment and violence.

And so young girls told us that they hold their urine for hours on end because they're afraid of using the bathroom at the recycling centers.

And that leads to a lot of problems and pain.

JOHN YANG: Are Bangladeshi women responding in some way or the organizing, making demands or calling for changes?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: Yeah, so in our research, women talked about a few things that they want, and there are getting involved in helping their communities adapt to the climate crisis, and helping them for instance, be part of these disaster risk management committees so they can feel prepared and ready to evacuate in a safe and timely manner.

But women are asking for decent work opportunities, access to sexual and reproductive health services in these cyclone centers and outside of them.

And these are just two things that women are demanding.

JOHN YANG: As the globe warms as the temperatures around the world are rising.

Do you think these this situation we're going to see replicated in more and more places around the world?

SALLY DIJKERMAN: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, extreme heat is extremely dangerous.

Exposure to extreme heat is very dangerous for pregnant women.

And that is something that we're seeing across the globe, whether you're in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Indonesia, or in Texas.

This exposure to extreme heat for pregnant women has been linked to miscarriage stillbirth low birth weight and prematurity.

JOHN YANG: Sally Dijkerman of Ipas Thank you very much.

SALLY DIJKERMAN: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: Now on the NewsHour Instagram page, how residents of the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv live day to day with limited electricity.

All that and more is on the NewsHour Instagram page.

And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.

I'm John Yang.

For all my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.