Following five years of unsuccessful attempts by Georgia Republican lawmakers to expand the state’s school voucher program, GOP Senators on Wednesday cast enough votes to send the latest version of the controversial plan to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk to be signed into law.

On Wednesday, several Republican House Majority Caucus members joined their colleagues in the Senate chamber to celebrate the so-called Georgia Promise Schools Act’s passage by a 33-21 party-line vote. The measure allows families with students enrolled in Georgia’s K-12 public schools to remove $6,500 of state funding provided to local school districts in order to attend private schools or to homeschool.

Critics of the vouchers continued the debate on Wednesday whether $6,500 would be enough for o afford cost of tuition at many of the state’s better private schools.

Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Cumming Republican, said that $6,500 is close to the state’s median private school cost, which should entice parents of students attending low-performing schools to send their children to a private school.

According to , the average private school tuition in Georgia is $11,893 per year, and tuition in the state ranges from $1,042 to $57,500.

Dolezal praised the GOP leadership in the House and Senate as well as Kemp for fighting to get across the finish line ahead of the March 29 deadline for this year’s Legislative session.

“I remember my freshman year 2019 when this bill failed on the floor of the Senate,” Dolezal said. “It means the world to me that five years later we united around this tailored bill that we can all agree is a step in the right direction.”

Different versions of so-called school choice proposals as a number of Republican legislators joined the majority Democratic lawmakers to block a plan they contend would divert taxpayer funding crucial to public schools to cover private schools.Several conservative state lawmakers from rural areas in the past have frequently criticized the expansion of a voucher program that local school officials contend will cost them funding that will be hard to cover with local money.

Senate Bill 233’s notable changes this year are intended to address recurring criticisms of voucher programs by attempting to ensure vouchers are available to students from low income families and hold private schools accountable by reporting to the state how those students are performing academically.

According to the bill, private schools must administer standardized tests to students enrolled in the program. In addition, vouchers will be prioritized for families with household incomes under 400% of the poverty level, amounting to $120,000 for a family of four.

If signed into law, the promise scholarship vouchers would first be available in the fall 2025 school year. Gov. Brian Kemp said earlier this year that the voucher program was a top legislative priority this year.

The bill caps the states’ investment into the program at 1% of the state’s Quality Basic Education formula budgeted for K-12 public education, which now comes out to $141 million annually to cover tuition for about 21,500 students.

The program would have a 10-year window before it expires. Any student enrolled in the program when it ends will keep receiving the payments until they graduate from high school.

Sen. Elena Parent, an Atlanta Democrat, compared the $6,500 voucher to a shiny object to misdirect attention away from how the Legislature has failed to provide many school districts across the state with the financial resources they need to succeed.

“The reality is that a $6,500 voucher doesn’t go nearly far enough to afford any quality, private education,” she said. “The state spends more than that on public schools.

“If you want to talk about real school choice, let’s put our money where our mouth is,” Parent said. “Give every kid $20,000, give $25,000, then we’d actually be talking about real school choice.”

Cobb County Republican Sen. Ed Setzler said the notion of school choice is often exercised by his fellow legislators and many other Georgians who have enough money to attend a strong academically performing public school or be able to afford homeschooling or private school tuition.

“Senate Bill 233 is for those single moms out there working two jobs to keep the lights on who wants school choice for their kids,” he said. “They can’t afford to move to a neighborhood in an area that has a successful public school. They can’t afford to move and sell their house because they’re upside down in their mortgage.”

Sen Nabilah Islam-Parkes said private schools’ autonomy in choosing which types of students they want to accept likely means many students who might benefit most from being in a new environment would be left behind.

“This bill is a thinly veiled effort to segregate and discriminate, under the guise of choice, private institutions free to pick their students will inevitably leave behind those who perhaps need the most support like our special needs kids, our struggling learners,” said the Duluth Democrat.

The nonprofit IDRA, which focuses on equal education opportunities, and the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition labeled it a harmful bill that diverts resources away from the state’s 1.7 million students in public schools.

The legislation was applauded by the conservative-leaning Americans for Prosperity-Georgia’s state director Tony West.

“Every yes vote today was a vote to empower families and students with the choices and resources they need to chart bright futures for Georgia’s students,” West said in a statement. “We applaud the lawmakers who heard from their constituents and made the right choice to expand educational opportunity in the Peach State. This unlocks so much potential for Georgia’s students.”

Georgia Recorder reporter Ross Williams contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

St. Anthony would have closed if Ohio’s legislature had not made vouchers so available over the last 10 years — so much so that the school can fill its 225 seats with students using vouchers to pay tuition they couldn’t afford otherwise, said Scott Embacher, a consultant for the school.

Without the vouchers “it would be stunning if we were still open,” he said.

Private schools across Ohio like St. Anthony have seen an infusion of hundreds of millions of tax dollars in recent years as the Republican-dominated state legislature has made vouchers available to more and more families. After years of enrollment declines and closures, private school operators, particularly religious schools, are filling seats, adding students and even looking to expand.

Voucher use in Ohio has grown more than 400 percent in the last 10 years, from 30,000 students in 2013-14 to more than 120,000 today. The state tax dollars going to families and private schools has grown from $175 million then to potentially $1 billion a year now.

The most dramatic leap — a nearly 50 percent jump from 83,000 to 120,000 — came just this school year after the Ohio legislature eliminated the last income cap for families to receive a voucher in summer of 2023.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, the legislature’s leading champion of vouchers, said he expects that number to climb again in the 2024-25 school year. Because the eligibility rules were changed so late, families and schools had little time to learn of the changes and make plans for the fall.

“People have already made their decisions for the year about where their child is going to go,” he said. “They’re going out for the basketball team, and they’ve already got the bus route . So the increase in the number of new students next year, it’s going to be much greater, because people will have figured it out.”

Huffman said he hopes the latest increase in vouchers will help older schools build up enrollment and even add new classrooms. He has hinted at directing more money to them, but has not proposed any plan yet.

If he does, Ohio’s bitter debates over vouchers that started when it was one of the pioneering states in the movement will flare up again. 

Ohio’s Cleveland-only voucher program in the 1990s was one of the first in the country and sparked complaints that it improperly advanced religion by providing tax money for religious schools. The landmark Zelman vs. Simons-Harris Supreme Court ruling in 2002, which sprung out of the Cleveland vouchers, allowed religious schools to be part of voucher programs if they were not the only recipients.

Since then, often led by Huffman, Ohio has added vouchers for low-income students, for those whose local public schools were designated as “failing” because of low test scores and then for families with ever-increasing incomes, raised in steps over time. Most recently, the legislature in 2023 removed the last income limit for voucher eligibility.

Every student is now eligible for $6,165 through eighth grade and $8,407 for high school, with a sliding scale of reductions only when family income is over 450 percent of the poverty level, or $135,000 for a family of four. Even then, voucher amounts can never go below 10 percent of the standard amount.

At each step voucher expansion drew applause from school choice advocates, while also sparking complaints from school districts and teachers unions that they pulled students and dollars out of district schools. Criticism of funneling money to religious schools has continued, as several estimates show more than 95 percent of voucher dollars in Ohio go to those religious schools.

A coalition of school districts have sued the state to block voucher expansion for these reasons since 2022. A trial is scheduled for November.

State aid to private schools could grow in yet another way. Some school choice advocates, including the conservative Buckeye Institute, have started calling for the state to start paying for private school construction, as it does with public schools. Brian Hickey, executive director of the Ohio Catholic Conference, said schools would welcome help building schools in rural areas that don’t have existing Catholic schools.

St. Anthony is looking for money to build a four-classroom addition behind the school and has early drawings of how it would look while it seeks funding. The school is already asking legislators if there might be state money available.

The most recent voucher expansion passed in 2023 seems to be serving students already at private school in this first year, avoiding the usual complaints of taking students from traditional districts. But critics blast it as simply a transfer of money to middle- and upper-class families who had already been able to afford having their children in private school.

Criticism persists that Ohio’s voucher programs have less state accountability than traditional school districts or charter schools. There is no national consensus on how voucher students are tested and if schools should be rated.  

Some states, like neighboring Indiana, have private school students using vouchers take all state tests. The state then gives those schools the same report cards as district and charter schools.

In Ohio, the legislature has slowly stripped away requirements for voucher students to take state tests and now have the voucher schools just report results of other national standardized tests of their own choosing, like the ACT or SAT.

That has long drawn criticism from opponents, who say that all schools using tax money should be held to the same standards.

“One thing that you won’t see in the (state) report cards is ratings for private schools that are now taking hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds, subsidizing private school tuition,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, one of the state’s two large teachers union. “As voucher enrollment is exploding, I think there is a massive need for accountability.”

In response to these complaints, two Republican representatives introduced a bill last month calling for state report cards for private schools accepting vouchers and for those schools to report more financial and student disciplinary data.The bill has yet to have a hearing.

The conservative leaning Fordham Institute, which supports school choice and most of the voucher expansion, has publicly shared concerns about accountability. And while Chad Aldis, who leads Fordham in Ohio, said he’d probably support money helping private school construction, he’d want safeguards there too. As with charter schools, Aldis would want to be sure private school operators can’t build facilities or buy equipment with tax money and then use them for something other than a school.

Voucher supporters say adding testing and other reporting requirements would increase administrative work and costs. They say the schools are a bargain, costing the public far less than district schools with all their local taxes on top of state aid. And they say parents don’t need report cards to know if the school is right for their children.

Huffman said it’s not really fair for public schools to call for the same accountability for private schools because public school districts never close. Private schools have had to close after losing students, he said.

“They’re not held accountable,” Huffman said. “They in fact, continue to operate, especially schools that don’t perform academically. That’s not true for private schools, because parents take their kids out.”

Attorneys for public school advocates said in oral arguments Tuesday before the Mississippi Supreme Court that the state constitutional provision that prevents public funds from going to private schools is “ironclad.”

Attorneys Rob McDuff and Will Bardwell, representing Parents for Public Schools, said at the time of the writing of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution that public funds were being spent on private schools and the framers of the constitution sought to prevent that from occurring. Section 208 of the constitution says, in part, that public funds shall not be provided to any school “not conducted as a free school.”

The Parents for Public Schools organization filed a lawsuit in 2022 challenging the constitutionality of a $10 million state legislative appropriation made to the Midsouth Association of Independents Schools.

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“Section 208 expresses a simple principle: public money shall go to public schools,” McDuff told a three-justice panel of the nine-member Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Only justices Leslie King of the Central District, Robert Chamberlin of the Northern District and David Ishee of the Southern District heard the oral arguments, though it is possible that all nine justices will rule on the issue. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court by state Attorney General Lynn Fitch after Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Mastin ruled the Legislature’s action was unconstitutional.

Justin Matheny of the Attorney General’s Office argued Tuesday that it was OK for the Legislature to appropriate the money to the state’s private schools for infrastructure repairs because the funds were not state money but were part of the more than $1 billion in federal funds provided to the state for COVID-19 relief.

Additionally, Matheny pointed out the funds were not directly appropriated to the private schools by the Legislature, but to the state Department of Finance and Administration with the instruction to send the money to the private schools in the form of grants. King of the Central District, who presided over the three-justice panel, told Matheny that it was the custom of the Legislature to appropriate most funds to state agencies with instructions to provide the money to the entity that the Legislature intended to receive the funds.

Matheny also argued that the Parents for Public Schools was not directly harmed by the Legislature’s action so the advocacy group did not have standing to bring the case. Bardwell argued that the group as taxpayers, including taxpaying parents of public school students, did have standing.

King asked Matheny if he was arguing that sometimes there is no one with standing to file a lawsuit challenging a legislative action as unconstitutional.

Matheny replied, “It is possible and it should not bother anyone” since no one was harmed by the legislative action. He said the appropriated money was not state funds reserved for public schools, so no one was harmed.

Chamberlin then posed a hypothetical to McDuff: If Congress earmarked money specifically for private schools, would the Mississippi Legislature be able to appropriate it to the private schools then? McDuff replied the Legislature would not under Section 208 of the state constitution. Of course, under Chamberlin’s hypothetical, Congress could bypass the Legislature and send money directly to the private schools just as it did to public schools as part of some of the COVID-19 relief funds.

The money the Legislature appropriated to the private schools in 2022 was part of a pot of federal discretionary funds that were sent to the states to be used in numerous areas, including on infrastructure improvements. But since the money was public, Bardwell and McDuff argued, in Mississippi it could not go to private schools.

Buck Dougherty of the Liberty Justice Center argued that the private schools should be allowed to intervene in the case. The private schools were not allowed to intervene in the lower Hinds County Chancery Court. Martin, the judge in the original case, ruled that the request to intervene was made too late.

In addition, Dougherty argued that Section 208 of the state constitution violates the U.S. Constitution. He said that constitutional provisions in various states prohibiting public money from going to private religious schools have been ruled as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Bardwell pointed out that the issue is not public money going to religious schools.

He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that “the state is not obligated to fund private schools.” But if a state is providing funds to a private school, it cannot discriminate against religious schools. The key difference, Bardwell said, is that Mississippi Constitution’s Section 208 prohibited public funds from going to all private schools.

Numerous people on both sides of the issue attended the Tuesday oral arguments in downtown Jackson.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

LINCOLN — The next front in Nebraska’s school choice fight could shift toward a proposal by State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair under which the state would deposit $1,500 a year per student into a new type of state-managed savings account for parents and guardians of students attending private K-12 schools.

Using the language of national school choice advocates, Hansen said his goal is to “fund students, not systems.” He said he has seen other states such as Iowa and Arizona use similar plans to subsidize private school costs.

“Parents are the primary educators of their children, not the government,” he told the Legislature’s Education Committee on Tuesday. “Our role should assist parents in that job.”

would let people use the funds for private school tuition, textbooks, school supplies, therapies, books and academic materials approved by the Nebraska Board of Education. The new educational savings accounts for approved or accredited private K-12 schools would begin in the 2025-26 school year.

The accounts would be overseen by the Nebraska State Treasurer’s Office. But the accounts would offer no tax advantages like the tax-free 529 college savings plans the Treasurer’s Office currently oversees. Instead, under LB 1386, these accounts would act as pass-throughs for state appropriations into a school choice fund that would be created, invested and managed by the state.

One Fremont-area father testified about his difficulties getting a public school to accept his option-enrollment daughter with moderate hearing loss, because she had an individualized education program, or IEP. He and others said the voucher program would make it easier for them to afford private school.

Opponents testified that they wanted public dollars spent on public schools.

Critics point to constitution

The fiscal note said if 80% of Nebraska’s 33,611 private school students applied for the fund it could cost the state $40 million.

The note also estimated the State Treasurer’s Office would need $300,000 to administer the accounts. That includes the costs of an auditor to make sure the funds are properly spent.

Critics of the voucher push said the plan would violate the Nebraska Constitution’s Article VII, Section 11, which says, “No appropriation or grant of public funds or property shall be made to any educational institution which is not owned and controlled by the state or a governmental subdivision thereof.”

Royers said private schools would receive public money, an issue opponents raised last year about the new Opportunity Scholarship Act.

Hansen, reached after the hearing, disagreed. He and State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state funds can be used this way three times. He explained the Nebraska workaround: The state will be giving state tax dollars to parents and not to private schools, he said.

He said he proposed starting with $1,500 a year because that’s how much state lawmakers funded last year as a baseline level of state aid per public school student. Iowa last session expanded its student savings account for private school students to the full cost of state aid per K-12 student, $7,598 a year.

Royers said other states starting similar voucher programs have learned that the programs largely help offset the costs of students already attending private schools. He said they don’t often create a large influx of new students from public schools who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. Private school students in Iowa and elsewhere often see large increases in private school tuition rates once state support increases, he said.

And the funding lost to public schools leaves public school students and districts in worse shape, Royers said.

“We should be learning from the mistakes coming out of other states…,” Royers said. “This does not help needy families. It helps private schools.”

Wayne questions Royers

State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, a school choice advocate, asked Royers why it was OK for the state to subsidize private preschool education and private higher education but not K-12.

“Is there something special about those years?” he asked, after Royers did not answer the first few times he asked.

A representative of the Holland Children’s Movement shared data from its 2023 poll indicating more than 60% of Nebraskans opposed subsidizing private schools with public funding.

Linehan and Education Committee Chairman Dave Murman said they had seen polling that found the opposite, indicating broad statewide support for school choice programs.

“It depends on how you ask the question,” Linehan said.

Hansen expects the bill to reach the legislative floor this session. Bill opponents, including the NSEA, say they will be ready.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Missouri University of Science and Technology will grant K-12 scholarships through the state’s tax-credit-based program MOScholars beginning in the 2024-2025 school year.

A nonprofit within Missouri S&T will become the seventh educational assistance organization, or EAO, in the MOScholars program. EAOs receive donations through a process overseen by the state treasurer and remit the money into scholarships for private-school and homeschool expenses.

According to emails obtained by The Independent in an open records request, Stephen Roberts, vice chancellor of strategic initiatives for Missouri S&T, shared information about the program with other administrators as early as May, describing MOScholars as a “philanthropy opportunity/vehicle.”

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He told The Independent on Wednesday that the program’s objectives align with the goals of the university and its partnered nonprofit, the Kummer Institute Foundation.

“Missouri S&T is a public land grant university, and as such has a responsibility to provide broad access to educational opportunities in the K-12 community,” he said in a statement. “The aims of the Missouri Scholars program have strong overlap with these objectives.”

Roberts wrote in a May 10 email that students could potentially use MOScholars’s $6,500 funding to pay for Missouri S&T camps or dual-enrollment programs.

Andrew Careaga, who leads the university’s communications, had the same impression in May after talking to the treasurer.

“State Treasurer Vivek Malek describes this program as an opportunity for individuals to earn tax credits by designating funds to scholarships for our summer camps if we were to become designated as an EAO,” he wrote in an email.

Roberts told The Independent that the K-12 scholarships only cover costs administered by a student’s school.

“The rules prohibit award of scholarships so that students can access educational programs offered directly by the EAO,” he said. “For a student to be awarded a scholarship, the educational programs must be offered directly by the eligible schools.”

But the idea of participating in MOScholars wasn’t enthusiastically received by all administrators.

Missouri S&T is a public higher education institution with public K-12 partnerships, such as — a program with STEM courses for high school students offering college credit. Beth Kania-Gosche, chair of the university’s department of teacher education and certification, wrote in an October email that she had a “PR concern” about participating in MOScholars.

“The other EAOs are all religious organizations,” she wrote. “We have to submit a fundraising plan as part of the application, and I have concerns about publicly connecting the STEM Center to fundraising for a controversial topic like school vouchers.”

“We partner with public schools on all of our programming,” she continued, “and if they have the perception we are raising funds for school vouchers, it’s problematic. “

Facilitators of the MOScholars program shy from the term “vouchers” because Missouri’s K-12 scholarships are not a direct state appropriation, although the program  does affect state finance. Donations made to the program, because they receive a 1:1 tax credit, come out of the state’s general fund.

Colin Potts, Missouri S&T’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, replied to address Kania-Gosche’s fears, but it is unclear if any resolution was reached.

“Beth, I know that you had some concerns about the wisdom of being seen to be supporting schools that have a less than rigorous approach to STEM and that this could undermine your relationships with public schools,” he wrote. “We’ll do what we can to avoid any issues of this kind.”

The application listed 11 schools the university is willing to issue scholarships to, with the disclaimer that the “list may not be inclusive.” All but one of these schools are religious.

Roberts told The Independent the program allows EAOs to grant scholarships to students with expenses in any public or private school, not just those listed on the application.

“Our intent would be to award as broadly as possible under these rules,” he said.

The university will accept applicants from Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau County, Jefferson City, Cole County,
Springfield, Greene County,
St. Louis and St. Louis County.

Missouri S&T also plans to support homeschooled students, according to the application.

The 11 schools listed on the application are: Calgary Lutheran High School, Helias Catholic High School, Immaculate Conception, Nerinx Hall, Notre Dame Regional High School, Notre Dame High School,
St. Louis University High School, St. Peter Interparish School, St. Joseph Cathedral School,
Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School and Webster County Parochial #1.

Email records show coordination between the university and the treasurer.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, the university’s vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Education, wrote Oct. 30 Malek told the Missouri S&T to submit its application as though it was a nonprofit organization.

The university submitted its application Oct. 31, the day it was due, writing that a nonprofit within Missouri S&T called the will serve as the required 501c3.

Kummer Institute leaders were included in early conversations about the program, but the decision to use the nonprofit as the EAO vehicle seems to occur the day the application is submitted.

“Let’s submit the application under the Kummer Foundation which is a 501c3,” Alysha O’Neil, vice chancellor for finance and operations, wrote the morning the application was submitted.

Missouri S&T and the Kummer Institute Foundation requested $1million in tax credits for the 2024-2025 school year and plans to serve 136 students.

“I am thrilled to see the number of educational assistance organizations participating in MOScholars is growing,” State Treasurer Vivek Malek said in a statement. “We welcome the Kummer Institute Foundation and commend them for their interest in providing educational opportunities as an EAO.”

The MOScholars program is currently as it faces a lag between the school year and donations, prompting some EAOs to loan their own money and increase fundraising.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

A new statewide survey shows that although most Hoosier kids attending private schools are continuing to learn cursive, far fewer Indiana public schools currently teach the writing style to younger students.

The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) surveyed 1,770 schools across Indiana this fall. Of the 1,386 respondents, 91% of state-accredited non-public schools are teaching cursive writing, but only 52% of public schools reported teaching it.

The survey was part of an ongoing, yearslong push to bring cursive writing back to Hoosier schools, spearheaded by Republican Sen. Jean Leising. She said the new survey data indicates that many Hoosier students attending public schools are at a “clear disadvantage,” and vowed to renew her legislative efforts to require cursive instruction.

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“I have been an unwavering proponent of cursive writing in the Indiana General Assembly for more than a decade. My concerns originally centered around making sure our children could sign their names on legal documents and read historical texts, but it is now much larger than that,” Leising said in a statement Monday. “They need to have the necessary motor skills and strong cognitive ability to succeed academically and professionally, and learning cursive writing can only further support their development.”

“Opponents of cursive writing say schools should focus more on teaching typewriting skills in an evolving age of technology and online work,” she continued. “I argue, cursive is equally important, and we risk limiting development of student’s learning abilities by moving away from essential handwriting curriculum.”

Writing on the walls?

The “Cursive Writing Survey” was sent out in August and September to all schools and corporations teaching grades K-6. Local administrators had until Oct. 1 to submit their responses.

About 78% of all schools participated in the IDOE survey. Of the 1,386 schools that reported, 80.4% were traditional public schools, 16.7% were state accredited non-public schools, and 2.9% were charter schools.

Of those schools that responded to the survey, 58.4% — equal to 809 schools — reported that cursive writing instruction is taking place in their classrooms. In the majority of schools where cursive is taught, instruction is primarily administered to students in grades two through four. A majority of the instruction takes place in grade three, according to the IDOE analysis.

Cursive is more commonly taught in private schools, though.

Of the 230 non-public schools that responded to the survey, 210 reported that cursive writing instruction is taking place. To compare, 580 out of the 1,110 traditional public schools that responded to the survey reported current cursive instruction.

Still, the survey is not totally conclusive, given that 384 K-6 schools across Indiana did not respond. The public report also doesn’t indicate which schools participates — leaving it unclear how many students are represented in the study.

Leising wants cursive back

Cursive writing hasn’t been required in Indiana’s public schools since 2010 — something Leising, R-Oldenburg, has been working to change for years.

During the 2023 legislative session, her originally required traditional public and charter elementary schools to include some form of cursive writing curriculum for the state’s younger students.

Leising — who has filed similar bills in the last decade to no avail — pared down the final version of the measure to instead require schools to report to the state education department about whether cursive writing is part of the curriculum there. The IDOE was tasked with creating a report with that information.

Leising maintained during the session that many private schools in Indiana are teaching the writing style, but the majority of public schools are not.

This week, the senator again pointed to showing that writing in cursive heightens activity in certain parts of the brain tied to memory and encoding new information, which she reiterated” is integral to early childhood learning.” Other cited by Leising show children who wrote in cursive had better reading and writing skills compared to those who didn’t.

“While lawmakers look to tackle literacy during the 2024 legislative session, I plan to join this initiative by also advocating for cursive writing curriculum, since various studies show knowing how to write in cursive helps improve information retention and comprehension abilities — supporting the successful development of reading and writing skills,” Leising said. “It is clear our students need support — now more than ever — to build foundational reading, comprehension and writing skills for their future success.”

Critics of mandatory cursive instruction say students already have too many subjects to master and that they’re better off focusing on typing and coding.

Teaching cursive in public schools waned after the Common Core standards, which most states adopted, didn’t include cursive in the recommended curriculum. , pointing to studies that show a link between cursive and cognitive abilities, including helping with reading and writing disabilities such as dyslexia and dysgraphia.

Indiana isn’t the only state seeking to bring back cursive writing, however.

At least 22 states currently require cursive to be taught as part of the public school curriculum, according to the National Education Association. And the list is growing.

In October, the California legislature unanimously passed — and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed — a law requiring the teaching of cursive or “joined italics” handwriting in grades one through six.

Earlier this year, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu additionally signed a bill requiring schools to teach cursive and multiplication tables.

Indiana lawmakers return to the Statehouse next month for a non-budget session. Legislative leaders have not included cursive instruction in their 2024 priorities, but literacy-focused initiatives — especially those affecting grade three — are expected to top education policy efforts.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

A Franklin Circuit Court judge on Monday struck down a law allowing charter schools in Kentucky, ahead of an in next year’s legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow public money to be spent on private schools.

Judge Phillip Shepherd declared 2022’s unconstitutional in a lawsuit filed by the , which represents 168 Kentucky school districts.

Shepherd wrote that charter schools are “private entities” that do not meet the Kentucky Constitution’s definition of  “public schools” or “common schools.”

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The “policy goals of the legislation are not at issue in this case,” wrote Shepherd. “Here, the only issue is whether the legislation runs afoul of the very specific mandates of the Kentucky Constitution governing public education and the expenditure of tax dollars.”

Shepherd concluded there “is no way to stretch the definition of ‘common schools’ so broadly that it would include such privately owned and operated schools that are exempt from the statutes and administrative regulations governing public school education.”

Common schools are supported by public taxes and all children within the district who meet age requirements of the school are allowed to attend it, the judge wrote. “The common schools must be open to every child, and operated, managed and fully accountable to the taxpaying public.”

“Under HB 9, charter schools — unlike common schools — are specifically permitted to impose enrollment caps limiting their enrollment to a number of children who will ensure ease of instruction through small class sizes,” Shepherd wrote. “Charter schools may turn away qualified children residing in the district. As set forth in the legislation, taxpayer supported charter schools are authorized to limit their enrollment, and to ‘conduct an admissions lottery if capacity is insufficient to enroll all students who wish to attend the school’.”

The ruling comes as a is seeking to become Kentucky’s first charter school. Gus LaFontaine, who owns , a pre-K to fifth-grade private school, was an intervenor in the lawsuit.

After the ruling, LaFonatine pointed out that 45 states, including those on Kentucky’s borders, offer “charter school options” and said that “we will continue to pursue judicial resolution that results in empowering all parents to participate in education freedom; even those that are not financially capable.”

Attorney General Daniel Cameron also intervened in the suit to defend the law.

Tom Shelton, executive secretary of the Council for Better Education, said “CBE appreciates the ruling from Judge Shepherd supporting our opinion that HB 9 violated our Kentucky Constitution. The constitution specifically prohibits the privatization of public funds. Public funds are for public purposes.”

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who has frequently voiced opposition to charter schools, vetoed House Bill 9 but the Republican-led General Assembly overrode it. Beshear was recently reelected to a second term.

The filed its lawsuit against Kentucky education officials in January seeking the law be ruled unconstitutional.

In December 2022, the Kentucky Supreme Court a Kentucky law creating a generous tax credit to help families pay for tuition at private schools. The which upheld a circuit court ruling by Shepherd, cited a long line of precedent reinforcing the Kentucky Constitution’s ban on the state financially supporting private schools.

did not advance in this year’s session but is expected to have much more support in 2024, when constitutional amendments will be on the November ballot.

After yesterday’s ruling, the Kentucky House Democratic caucus leaders issued a statement applauding the decision: The Kentucky Constitution is abundantly clear: The General Assembly can only authorize and fund public education. We said that in 2017, when charter schools were first approved; we said that again in 2022, when the law rejected today was passed; and we’ll say it once more in 2024, when there will be yet another attempt to route public tax dollars into private schools. Our belief is simple: Follow the constitution and give public education our undivided support.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on and .

OKLAHOMA CITY — Tens of thousands of Oklahoma families applied for private school tax credits within minutes of the program’s launch, potentially consuming the entire $150 million budget after an hour and a half.

The state received more than 30,000 submissions for the new parental choice tax credits within the first 90 minutes of the application window on Wednesday, according to a news release from Gov. Kevin Stitt.

“It is amazing to see the demand for this program, and I hope the legislature will consider ways to allow more families to apply for this tax credit in the future,” Stitt said in a statement Thursday night.

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About in Oklahoma. More than 150 private schools had registered with the program by Wednesday afternoon so their students could be eligible to apply.

The refundable tax credits offer $5,000 to $7,500 per student to offset the cost of private school tuition and other educational expenses. The amount a family could receive depends on household earnings, and though there’s no maximum income limit, lower-earning families get a larger tax credit.

Little, if any, of the program’s $150 million budget would be left over if all 30,000 applicants qualify for even the lowest tax credit amount possible.

The total budget will rise to $200 million in 2025 and $250 million in 2026.

Families with a household income of $150,000 or less have priority consideration if they apply before Feb. 5. Outside of the priority group, the tax credits are available on a first-come-first-served basis, incentivizing applicants to submit their forms as quickly as possible.

The Oklahoma Tax Commission declined to provide Oklahoma Voice with any metrics this week on the total number of applications received and how many submissions came from the priority group.

The Tax Commission will use its internal records to check applicants’ household income. The agency contracted with a company, Merit International, to assist with verifying school enrollment documents, expense records and vendor applications while also managing the program’s online platform.

Stitt, a self-made millionaire, initially said his family would apply for the tax credits but . Critics of the program, especially Democrats in the state legislature, said Stitt’s comments illustrated their original fears that the tax credits would help only wealthy families whose children already attend private schools.

The governor called the program a “step towards true education freedom.”

“School choice should be for everyone, not just the rich,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

Roughly 4,800 students are participating in the first semester of Arkansas’ new K-12 voucher program.

A bulk of those kids are attending the largest, mostly-religious private schools in the state. Of the 94 participating private schools, there are also a number focused on students with special needs.

The new data was reported in the Arkansas Department of Education’s to the state Legislature.

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“Arkansas’ Education Freedom Account program has only been around for a few months and already, it’s having a positive impact for kids in the state,” said Alexa Henning, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ communications director. “Nearly 5,000 students at almost 100 schools have enrolled in the program, offering families across Arkansas the chance to choose the school that best suits their individual needs and helping every student have access to a quality education.”

The EFA program was one of the primary components of the LEARNS Act; it was also the most controversial.

The program provides state funds for allowable educational expenses, primarily private school tuition this first year. Approximately $6,670 will be available per account for the 2023-2024 school year (Those who were participating in the Succeed Scholarship Program, which targeted primarily individuals with disabilities, received $7,413). The average cost of tuition at EFA schools is around $7,600, according to an Advocate analysis.

The Arkansas Department of Education allocated $46.7 million in state funds for the first year of the voucher program, but the report, which was submitted Saturday, projects the state will only expend about $32.5 million over the first year. So far, about $7 million has been spent.

This year, participation in the program is limited to certain students:

• Students with disabilities.
• Students experiencing homelessness.
• Foster children.
• Children of active duty military members.
• Students enrolled in an “F”-rated school or school in need of Level 5 support.
• Students enrolling in kindergarten for the first time.

The eligibility pool will be expanded over the coming two years until the program is open to all. The department said it has an opportunity in the next few years to deploy “a deliberate and systematic approach to EFA program participation, including, but not limited to, enacting a lottery system with prioritization for certain eligible special populations.”

The majority of students participating in the program this year, about 53%, are in Central Arkansas; another 16% are from Northwest Arkansas, according to the report.

Of those in the program, 44% of students have a disability and 31% are first-time kindergarteners. Less than 5% of students in the program were previously enrolled in a public school.

The third-party company that processes the payments between the state, families and schools has received $176,853 in processing fees so far — roughly 2.7% of the overall program costs.

Other program spending has been on uniform costs and other “required academic expenses.”

The report brought continued criticism from those opposed to vouchers and the LEARNS Act and praise from those who supported it.

Arkansas Education Association President April Reisma, a special education teacher in the Pulaski County Special School District, said the report should be “deeply disturbing to the tax-paying residents of Arkansas.”

“The department cloaks this funding as ‘School Choice’ and ‘Parental Empowerment,’” Reisma said. “To be clear, Arkansas already has school choice. Parents already have the power to choose the school that is best for their child. The guiding principles for the disbursement of these funds leave too many questions than answers. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to use these public funds to expand educational opportunity, high quality school options, use data to inform rulemaking, and ensure strong fiscal stewardship of public funds by investing in our current public schools with that public funding?”

Nicholas Horton, the founder and CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Opportunity Arkansas, wrote that the inaugural report showed the program was working.

“Arkansas is still early into its education freedom journey, but this initial data is very encouraging,” Horton said. “Although it comes as no surprise, it’s now even more clear that there’s a high demand for EFAs across the state – and this is just the beginning.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

The Texas Senate unveiled Monday its main bill to establish an program, a priority for Gov. this special session.

, authored by Sen. , R-Conroe, would allow families access $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation among other things.

“Educating the next generation of Texans is a fundamental responsibility, and it is my belief that empowering parents with school choice will encourage competition, innovation and ensure that every student in Texas has the opportunity to find an educational path for their unique needs,” Creighton said in a statement.

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The state comptroller’s office would establish and administer these education savings accounts. The bill seeks to allocate $500 million from the general revenue fund for the next two years to pay for the program. The comptroller’s office would also be in charge of preventing fraud and misuse of funds — a major area of concern for many lawmakers — as well as approving an organization to help process applications and approve vendors and participating private schools.

Creighton says that the program will not siphon money away from public schools as the funding comes from general revenue, not the , which is the main source of funding for the state’s K-12 public schools.

The bill does not require private school students to take a state-administered academic achievement exam, something that school voucher critics in the Texas Legislature have said an education savings account proposal should have to even consider it.

If passed into law, almost any student who was enrolled in a public school last year would be eligible to apply for the program, as well as any student ready to enroll in Pre-K or kindergarten.

The bill includes a formula to prioritize entry to the program if there are more applicants than funds available. Forty percent of open spots would go to students who receive free or reduced lunch; 30% to families who earn between 185% and 500% of the federal poverty line; 20% to those with disabilities; and 10% to those who attended public, private or home-school in the last school year.

The filing of SB 1 came hours after Creighton announced , a $5.2 billion school funding bill that would allocate most of the money to teacher raises and include a small funding increase to help schools pay their rising bills.

It remains to be seen whether the funding bill can even move forward. The only education-related item in Abbott’s agenda for the special session was education savings accounts, a school voucher program that would give families access to state funds to pay for their children’s private schooling. The state constitution says lawmakers can only pass bills related to the governor’s agenda items during special sessions. The governor can at any time modify the agenda.

Creighton said SB 1 and SB 2 work in tandem and show that lawmakers can provide more schooling options for Texas families while also adding public school funding. During the regular session, two proposals to create an education savings account program and give teachers pay bonuses, also authored by Creighton, fizzled in the House amid disagreements over vouchers and how to give teachers raises.

In a Hail Mary play at the end of the regular session, Creighton his education savings account proposal — similar to the one he announced Monday — to House Bill 100, a school finance bill. That bill eventually died after House members once again stood firm against school vouchers, though the move left public schools with and other rising expenses.

The future of an education savings account program remained uncertain as this year’s third special session started Monday with Texas Republicans . Lt. Gov. called on House Speaker to resign because the speaker demanded he return $3 million to a major backer, the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, after The Texas Tribune reported its leader had met with a white supremacist and antisemitic activist. Patrick accused Phelan of using this weekend’s Hamas attack on Israel for political gain.

Meanwhile, Texas House Democrats signaled their intent to once again stand against any kind of school voucher program.

Rep. of San Antonio, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters his group is “very clear: no vouchers and no deals.”

“A voucher scam is a poison pill that will end up taking more out of our public schools than it puts in,” said Rep. , D-Austin.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said he believes Abbott and the Senate are on the same page when it comes to public school funding and school vouchers.

SB2 “is the main carrot Abbott is using to entice the anti-voucher Republicans and the small number of persuadable Democrats to vote for school choice legislation,” Jones said. “The quid-pro-quo is that once school choice legislation is en route to the governor’s desk, Abbott will place public school funding on the special session agenda, thereby allowing the Senate and House to quickly pass SB2 or a comparable House bill.”

This article originally appeared in  a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

With an expected special lawmaking session on public education on the horizon, a Texas House committee in August proposed a path forward to reach a compromise on school vouchers, one of the most polarizing issues the Texas Legislature debated this year.

The 15-member committee, composed of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, released a report that also made a number of recommendations on school finance, the teacher workforce and student outcomes.

The committee didn’t endorse outright the Legislature passing a school voucher program, which would let parents use taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools.

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But if lawmakers were to approve such a program, the report said, it should be smaller in scale than the one proposed during this year’s regular legislative session and prioritize high-need students.

The committee also recommended that any voucher program approved by the Legislature should use money that is separate from the public education budget and be held accountable to taxpayers.

The report is a first glimpse at what might be the terms the House requires in order to get the chamber’s approval on a voucher program. House Democrats and rural Republicans, who have previously banded together against proposals they believe might hurt the state’s public education system, blocked vouchers during the regular session.

It remains to be seen whether the full House would agree with the committee’s recommendations for a more constrained voucher program and whether the Senate, which wanted a broader program during the regular session, would sign off on a scaled-back version. Gov. has also said he a more universal program and previously threatened to veto any diluted version.

The committee also recommended that lawmakers look into expanding educational choices that already exist within the state’s public education system, such as STEM academies, career and technical education and early-college high schools.

Committee vice chair Rep. , D-San Antonio, wrote that a school voucher program should include a sunset date to allow the Legislature to review its performance and decide whether it’s worth continuing.

“Without accountability the Legislature is left without informational tools to monitor student progress,” Gervin-Hawkins wrote.

Rep. , D-Austin, was the only committee member who didn’t add her signature to the report, writing that some of its recommendations would hurt public schools and instead included her own suggestions for giving public schools more funding for teacher pay and special education programs. Rep. , D-Houston, signed the report but wrote that he did not agree with creating any kind of voucher program.

Rep. , R-New Boston, wrote that the public education system already offers a plethora of choices for parents and students, and worried that school vouchers would open the door for public dollars to go to private institutions without any plans to ensure transparency or accountability.

“As we go forward, we cannot ignore either the right of parents to decide what is best for their children nor our constitutional mandate of maintaining ‘public free schools,’ ” VanDeaver wrote. “I look forward to a thorough debate and honest discussions.”

House Speaker the committee in June to look into “educational opportunities” for Texas’ schoolchildren ahead of an expected special session to revisit the discussion on vouchers. The committee was announced at a time when both Abbott, who has made vouchers one of his top priorities this year, and Phelan, who was mostly noncommittal on vouchers during the regular session, found rare common ground on property tax cuts.

The committee’s report comes months after the regular session ended in a between the House and Senate over , a voucher-like program that would allow parents access to a state-managed account to pay for private school tuition and other educational expenses.

Lawmakers in the House wanted nothing to do with them while the Senate tried every tactic to pass a voucher-like program, even tacking it on to the only the House advanced during the session. The lower chamber did not accept the Senate’s change and the session ended with neither a voucher-like program nor any new money for schools to pay for teacher raises and combat rising inflation.

Teacher and student outcomes

The committee report recommended that the Legislature raise the basic allotment, which is the base amount of money that school districts receive per student. Raising the allotment was a priority for cash-strapped schools going into the regular session.

The committee said raising the basic allotment will contribute to student achievement and let schools give raises to teachers, who were the only state employees not to receive a raise during the regular session.

The committee also recommended expanding the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a program that promises to pay teachers up to six-figure salaries if they meet certain performance requirements. It also recommends free pre-K for teachers’ children. In addition, it included recommendations to fund and establish Teacher Residency Programs, in which aspiring teachers are paired up with a teacher for a school year. Some school districts are already seeing , although they’ve had to get creative on how to fund them without new funding from the state.

The report highlighted that about 1 in 3 teachers taught last year with no certification. To make the profession more accessible, the report recommended waiving certification costs for those wanting to be bilingual and special education teachers, and waiving certification costs for first-time teacher applicants.

The committee also recommended eliminating a charge school districts would incur if they hire retired teachers.

It recommended that lawmakers consider passing a policy that allows for rapid intervention when students show low proficiency in any school subjects and provide schools with tools to monitor students’ literacy development.

Most of these recommendations were previously made by a put together by Abbott earlier this year. Lawmakers were ready to make some of these changes with several bills during the regular session, but they also fell apart amid the debate over school vouchers.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

LINCOLN — Spending to rescind a new school choice law in Nebraska, along with expenditures to retain it, have topped $2 million, according to the most recent state campaign spending reports.

The bulk of the money came from two sources: teachers unions that oppose school-choice laws; and an organization backed by former Trump administration official Betsy DeVos that promotes use of state funds for private and parochial education.

The reports, which covered up to July 26, indicated that Support Our Schools, on the Opportunity Scholarships Act on the 2024 ballot, had raised over $1.3 million and spent more than $1.2 million.

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The referendum drive has set a goal of collecting 90,000 signatures of registered voters in Nebraska. It must submit about 61,000 valid signatures by a deadline of Aug. 30.

“We are not there yet, but we are well on our way,” said Karen Kilgarin, a spokeswoman for the Nebraska State Education Association, the state teachers’ union, which is spearheading the referendum effort.

Meanwhile, an organization called Keep Kids First that is urging Nebraskans to , reported raising $746,665 through late July to oppose the signature drive. It reported spending of about $582,000.

Some of the funds are being spent to employ “blockers” who shadow the Support Our Schools petition circulators and attempt to discourage people from signing.

“We do need to be where they are because they are not being honest when they ask people to sign,” said State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, the chief sponsor of the Opportunity Scholarships Act.

Scholarships for private and parochial schools

The act, Legislative Bill 753, allows taxpayers to direct half of their state income tax payment, up to $100,000, to organizations that provide scholarships for students to attend private and parochial schools.

The goal of the bill is to provide low-income families the same option to attend a private or parochial school as more well-heeled families. The program is capped initially at costing $25 million a year, though it could rise to $100 million a year after 10 years if the tax break is fully utilized.

Opponents of the act say that by diverting funds from the state, less money will be available for public education and other state priorities.

They also maintain that LB 753 offers an unusually generous tax break compared to donations to other charities, and that in other states, such school choice programs have grown exponentially, gobbling up more and more state funds.

Nebraska was one of two states that didn’t offer any kind of school choice program before Gov. Jim Pillen signed the Opportunity Scholarships Act into law.

The spending reports indicated that 85% of the funds raised by the Support Our Schools group came from two teachers unions: the National Education Association (which gave $800,000) and the Nebraska State Education Association ($316,340).

The primary funder for the Keep Kids First group was the American Federation for Children, whose leading backer is DeVos, a former U.S. education secretary in the Trump administration and a national advocate for school choice. The Federation for Children contributed $583,268, or 78% of the funds raised by Keep Kids First.

Kilgarin, of the NSEA, said that Support Our Schools had more than 700 individual contributors to its referendum drive and that supporters are holding multiple events, each day, to collect more signatures.

‘Our foot is on the gas’

“Our foot is on the gas and we’re going to get as many signatures as we can,” Kilgarin said.

Among the major contributors to Support Our Schools is the OpenSky Policy Institute, a Lincoln-based think tank that opposes LB 753 and contributed $101,099 in support for petition gathering.

As a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization, OpenSky is banned from contributing to political candidates but can spend funds on lobbying and petition drives if that spending is less than 20% of its total expenditures.

The organization’s 2021 tax report indicated it spent about $91,000 on lobbing activities and had an overall budget of about $1 million.

Rebecca Firestone, OpenSky’s executive director, said “good accountants” will help ensure that the organization stays below the 20% limit.

She said the Opportunity Scholarships law is not only bad tax policy, but that in other states, such school choice programs grow larger and larger.

In a report Wednesday, OpenSky said that in Arizona — the first state to provide tax credits for private school scholarships — spending on school choice programs had increased from an initial $4.5 million in 1997 to an anticipated $900 million this year.

Among the contributors to the Support Our Schools effort is former Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle and philanthropist Rhonda Seacrest. They gave $500 and $5,000, respectively.

Some Nebraska business leaders recently contributed to the Keep Kids First drive. They include former Kiewit Corp. CEO Ken Stinson, Omaha beef producer Jim Timmerman and Mike McCarthy, founder of the McCarthy Group. They contributed $25,000 each.

The Sherwood Foundation, founded by prominent Omaha philanthropist Susie Buffett, provided about half of the funding for OpenSky in 2021, according to tax records.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

The Legislature’s Joint Education Committee on Monday recommended approval of proposed emergency rules that will govern the state’s new school voucher program. The recommendation will next be considered by the Arkansas Legislative Council’s executive subcommittee Thursday.

Created under the , the Educational Freedom Account program provides up to 90% of the annual per-student funding rate for use on allowable education expenses, including private-school tuition. EFA funding for the 2023-2024 school year will be about .

The Arkansas State Board of Education the proposed emergency rules for the EFA program last week. Pending legislative approval, the will be in place when the LEARNS Act and the EFA program go into effect Aug. 1.

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During , Arkansas Department of Education officials answered questions for about an hour from lawmakers, including Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, who was concerned about licensure regulations.

Under the proposed rules, a private school participating in the program must employ teachers who have “at least baccalaureate degrees or have equivalent documented experience,” as determined by ADE. Chesterfield questioned the impact of not requiring an educator to have a college degree.

“Is this why Johnny can’t read because we’re putting folks in there that don’t even have a bachelor’s degree?” Chesterfield asked.

Chief of Staff Courtney Salas-Ford said “that’s an entirely different conversation,” but ADE is providing private schools the same options afforded to public schools for times when they cannot find someone to fill positions.

“So if they feel that they can best meet their students’ needs with a teacher who does not have a bachelor’s degree, and parents know of that and they are still choosing to admit their child into that private school, then we wanted to afford them that same flexibility,” she said.

Arkansas has different licensure pathways, and public schools may apply for an exception from the state law requiring a licensed educator “if it imposes an undue hardship” for a school to fill the position with a licensed individual in a timely manner, .

For example, school districts can obtain teacher licensure waivers through , which allows them to petition the State Board of Education for the same waivers granted to open-enrollment charter schools if any students residing in the district attend a charter school.

According to a by the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy, 836 teachers were hired using Act 1240 waivers in 69 districts during the 2021-22 school year. This represents about a quarter of the state’s districts and 2% of the nearly 40,000 teachers employed that year.

Chesterfield, a former teacher, acknowledged the proposed emergency rules are temporary, but urged officials to consider clearly defining the minimum requirements in the permanent rules so there’s a “floor of accountability” for who’s teaching students.

“To me it just seems willy-nilly to just say or equivalent experience,” she said. “It’s just not good enough. I think our kids deserve better.”

The emergency rules approved by the Joint Education Committee Monday will be replaced by permanent rules, which the State Board of Education last week approved to release for public comment. ADE will use the feedback to recommend any proposed changes, which will be brought back to the board. Details about the public comment period have not yet been announced.

Implementation of the EFA program has been delayed due to a lawsuit challenging the effective date of the LEARNS Act. A Pulaski County circuit judge last month invalidated the law’s emergency clause, which would have allowed it to go into effect immediately instead of 91 days after the end of the legislative session.

The Arkansas Supreme Court granted Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s request to expedite his appeal of the ruling. The high court’s decision is likely to come after the law takes effect on Aug. 1.

ADE officials told lawmakers Monday that the Pulaski County judge’s order was a declaratory order, not an injunction, so steps may be taken to prepare for the LEARNS Act going into effect next month, such as approving these emergency rules.

ADE began accepting EFA applications from students and schools on June 20. Chief General Counsel Andrés Rhodes said Monday that about 2,000 of the 3,400 students who have applied for the program have been approved so far. Additionally, around 83 schools’ applications have been approved, with a handful of others pending, he said.

The EFA program will be phased in over three years with first-year participation limited to 1.5% of the state’s current public school enrollment, or roughly 7,148 students. Inaugural year eligibility includes students with disabilities, students enrolled in an “F”-rated school or students enrolling in kindergarten for the first time.

Rep. Brit McKenzie, R-Rogers, asked how the state had been disseminating information about the program. Salas-Ford said while program information was posted on ADE’s website, promotion of the program has been primarily through third parties, independent organizations or private schools that have chosen to advertise the information. ADE also sent information to public schools, but no money was committed to marketing materials, she said.

The EFA application deadline is Aug. 1. Students can continue applying after that date, but their acceptance into the program will be contingent upon available funds. The program will be capped at approximately $46 million for the 2023-2024 school year, Rhodes said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

More than double the number of expected students applied for Iowa’s Education Savings Account program to pay for private school attendance, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced last week.

The governor’s office reported that more than 29,000 students applied for the program and over 17,500 have been approved, far exceeding the state’s projection that just over 14,000 students would be approved to use an ESA in the first year of the program. The state has until July 31 to approve or reject the remaining applications.

“The tremendous response from Iowa families demonstrates there’s both a need and a strong desire for school choice in our state,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Allowing parents to choose the education that’s best for their children levels the playing field and creates equal opportunities for Iowa’s students.”

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����ԴDZ������ in January. Lawmakers approved $107.4 million to fund the program in its first year during the 2023 legislative session — but the program is already set to cost at least $26 million more. Funding for every application already approved as of last week would cost the state $133.5 million. The state has confirmed every approved account will be funded.

Officials with the governor’s office said exact costs and numbers are still unknown, as the money will only be disbursed if the student is accepted to attend private school. Reynolds’ office said the finalized numbers on cost and how many students are participating will not be available until October.

There are about 9,000 open seats available in accredited private schools, the governor’s office said, meaning there may be more ESA applications accepted than there are available spots. If a student is approved for an ESA but does not attend private school, their account will be closed for the school year and the funds will be returned to the state’s general fund.

The ESA program funds will be managed through Odyssey, a New York-based education technology company. Funds within an ESA will remain in the state’s possession until the student’s parent or guardian approves the private school’s invoice requesting payment for tuition and associated fees.

Students’ accounts will begin receiving funding July 15, the governor’s office said.

While final numbers remain unconfirmed, 40% of the applications approved — roughly 7,000 — are students currently attending a public school who plan to move to an accredited private school using ESA funds. The remaining 60% are students already attending accredited private schools.

For the 2023-24 school year, current private school students are only eligible to create an account if their family has a household income up to 300% of the federal poverty line (FPL) — roughly $90,000 for a family of four.

That threshold will raise to a maximum of 400% of the federal poverty line in the 2024-25 school year; all Iowans, regardless of income, will be eligible for ESAs from the program’s third year forward.

The governor’s office reported that among approved applicants:

• 14% have household incomes below 100% of the FPL — $30,000 or less for a family of four.
• 31% have household incomes between 101% and 200% of the FPL — between $30,000 and $60,000.
• 36% have household incomes between 201% and 300% the FPL — between $60,000 and $90,000.
• 19% have household incomes above 300% the FPL — more than $90,000 for a family of four.

Some opponents of the ESA program say the program will hurt Iowa’s public education system. The program diverts the $7,635 per-pupil funding for a student from their public school district to the ESA account. Reynolds and Republicans have argued that the law’s provision granting public school districts $1,205 in state funding for each private school student with an ESA in their district will offset the lost funding.

Mike Beranek, president of the Iowa State Education Association said the money being used to fund the ESA program could be used to help improve Iowa’s public schools and “give every student an equal chance for success.”

“Unfortunately for Iowans, the governor and the majority party in the statehouse have decided that unlimited budgets are reserved for just a select few Iowans,” Beranek said in a statement. “A voucher program that would initially have cost Iowa taxpayers almost a billion dollars over the next three years will cost Iowans even more.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

Not only did its creation spark a lengthy court battle over church-state separation that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, investigators have cited the district three times for conflicts of interest and other questionable financial practices.

Founded in order to uphold centuries-old, ultra-Orthodox traditions, the tiny district in New York’s Hudson Valley caters exclusively to families in the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews who have children with disabilities. It remains largely closed to public scrutiny.

Most recently, school officials refused to address how the system of less than 500 students is spending nearly $94 million in federal pandemic aid designed to curb learning loss and other effects of one of the worst disruptions to education in American history.

To put that amount in perspective, in the last round of funding alone, the Kiryas Joel Village Union Free School District received over $95,000 per student — nearly 40 times the and what New York schools spend on special education students. 

Its use of those funds could raise eyebrows. Documents The 74 obtained from the state reveal the district is investing over $12 million in upgrades to facilities owned by organizations affiliated with the religious group’s leadership.

The pandemic’s exceptional windfall calls out for a high level of transparency and accountability from a school system with little to no separation from a ruling religious community that has openly — and successfully — . 

But the district has avoided repeated requests from The 74 to address how it used the money. Since October, Kiryas Joel officials have ignored a public records request filed under the state Freedom of Information Law, and Superintendent Joel Petlin declined to answer questions by email, phone and on social media. 

The district also advised others not to talk to reporters about its COVID spending. A contractor who made relief-funded improvements to a district-leased building provided some information to The 74, only to text a reporter the next day asking not to use any of it because “the school simply asked that we not share anything.”

School systems in New York and nationwide are to publicly post their stimulus spending plans online, but Kiryas Joel never has. It doesn’t even have a website.

“[The district] is always an outlier in dollars received and in some of the way they do things,” said Brian Cechnicki, executive director of the Association of School Business Officials of New York and the former director of education finance at the New York State Education Department. “It’s a tough nut to crack.”

When The New York Times raised issues about the district’s relief spending in , Petlin called it a “false narrative.”

“The public would have been better served by a story that helps it understand this unique and truly special school district and community and celebrates the remarkable work being done here,” he said in . 

Petlin argued that the district’s use of federal funds was approved by the state education department, but oversight could be less than rigorous. Cechnicki, who left the department in 2020, said “There is a high volume of these types of reports that have to be approved, and the department perennially doesn’t have the capacity to do fine-grained reviews of all 700ish districts.”

Nonetheless, the state selected Kiryas Joel as one of about 16% of districts to receive its highest level of , requiring a full-day, on-site examination of documents and staff interviews. The state has between January 2023 and June 2024 to complete the on-site visits; it’s unclear when Kiryas Joel’s will happen.

The results of that investigation — like nearly all information on local relief fund spending — won’t be easy for the public to access. New York requires anyone seeking such data to submit open records requests. That makes it tough to track how districts used the money to address even broad areas such as hiring staff or addressing learning loss. 

New York’s approach contrasts with states like and , which provide online portals where the public can keep up with how much districts have spent and in what categories. New York’s lack of transparency has kept parents largely in the dark about whether the historic expenditure is having an impact, advocates say.

“There’s no sharing of best practices. There’s nothing around evaluation. It’s a missed opportunity,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director at . “There needs to be more urgency around this.” 

Private school bonus

One reason for the state’s heightened scrutiny of Kiryas Joel might be the sheer amount of federal relief money it received — so much that Deputy Superintendent Josh Kamensky told the Times that it was “really hard to spend.”

—for a district with less than 500 students, including preschoolers — was 12 times what the Ellenville Central School District to its north received for a district of over 12,000 students and more than five times what the 2,700-student nearby Monticello district received.

The mismatch in Kiryas Joel’s favor is rooted in the arcane machinery of federal spending, which is weighted to support those living in poverty.

In the first wave of pandemic funding, the district, with an 86% poverty rate, received almost $7.6 million. That law followed the traditional Title I formula that requires the district to provide “equitable services” for low-income children, even though the vast majority of those students in Kiryas Joel attend private schools. The bulk of the money, $5.4 million, went to over 5,500 students in 21 yeshivas, private Hasidic schools that strongly prioritize religious study over academics.

In his statement on the Times article, Petlin noted the district’s responsibility to provide those services. “We have no discretion to keep this money for our public school students and every federal dollar spent is approved by the NY State Education Department,” he wrote.

But the second and third pandemic relief packages had no such requirement for private school students. Nonetheless, the funding formula continued to factor in the in the greater community, including those students who don’t attend public schools. That left more than $86 million for a district with few students.

One of the nation’s foremost experts in school finance suggested federal officials should have adjusted the formula for the latter waves of funding to avoid an outcome some might view as perverse.

“In a weird way, the district benefits from having the kids in the private schools and no longer has to share it,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

Conflicts of interest

Another reason for investigators’ increased focus on Kiryas Joel might be that it has run afoul of them before:

• In 2009, a state showed that the district violated conflict of interest law when two board members failed to disclose that they are also on the board of United Talmudical Academy of Kiryas Joel, which runs a network of yeshivas. The Kiryas Joel board members voted in favor of a lucrative to rent a building owned by UTA of KJ.
• In 2011, the national education department’s found that the district put $276,443 in Title I funds toward the cost of the lease for the school and a second lease for another UTA of KJ building used for afterschool programs for yeshiva students. “Because decisions surrounding both lease agreements were influenced by the board members with evident conflicts of interest, there is no assurance that the decisions made were in the best interest of the students of Kiryas Joel,” the audit found. The district had to .
• The same report showed the district could not account for over $191,000 in “significant overtime” pay charged to Title I. Timesheets for those receiving the extra money didn’t identify the program they were working on. 
• Finally, in 2017, the state comptroller issued that found the district reimbursed three employees a total $15,000 for commuting to work even though it  wasn’t part of their employment agreement. Petlin responded that it was an oral agreement, but said it would be documented in the future. Another employee was reimbursed over $4,700 for child care expenses despite being ineligible for that benefit.

The Times — in a on education at the yeshivas — raised new questions about the propriety of payments made to UTA of KJ with relief funds, including $1.3 million in lease payments and another $288,000 to rent the organization’s swimming pool. 

Two sons of school district board member Harry Polatsek — also on the board of UTA of KJ — have connections to the district, the Times found. One runs a bus company that received a $656,000 contract paid for with relief funds. And the other is on staff as a teacher’s aide, emergency medical technician and parent liaison. Documents obtained from the state education department show the district is spending $1.1 million in relief funds on parent liaisons, but don’t list employees’ names. 

The relationship between the district and its landlord demonstrates “a habit of interpreting the law on their own terms and for their own benefit,” said Beatrice Weber, executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education, a nonprofit seeking to improve secular education in New York’s Hasidic schools.

Many of the district’s big-ticket expenditures are upgrades to buildings it leases from UTA of KJ and its affiliates. In his statement, Petlin said any improvements “benefit our students, and not our landlord.”

But The 74 has found the district is spending over $12 million in improvements to the building it rents — re-doing the flooring, replacing the HVAC systems, re-paving a parking lot, adding a classroom audio system, installing an outdoor playground and building a temperature-controlled “bus shelter.” 

Nearly $3 million went to , which specializes in classroom furnishings for students with disabilities. The company is installing “sensory” features — such as a wall with flowing water and bubbles lit up by LED lights — at the school. 

“The sound of the water with the lights and the bubbles in the wall are instantly relaxing,” said Shevy Schlesinger, director of business at Playlearn. Many of the purchases include furniture and equipment that could be removed like swings or climbing walls, she noted. But she acknowledged also making improvements to permanent structures like the floors and ceilings.

Kiryas Joel is not alone in renting, instead of owning, a school building. Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century Schools Fund, a nonprofit focused on modernizing schools, cited a 2021 example in which the in New Jersey signed a 20-year, $160 million lease with private developers to renovate a former hospital into a high school.

“It’s a classic real estate transaction. There’s nothing unusual about leasing a building and making improvements that you pay for,” she said. But since it’s public money, she added, “The duty to make it transparent is really high. Even if there’s a little bit of abuse, it poisons the well.”

The district is also spending a total of over $34 million in relief funds on salaries for administrators, specialists and support staff, according to documents filed with the state. While districts across the country have spent relief money this way, warn that using temporary funds to pay employees raises questions about a district’s ability to afford those costs when the money runs out.

Another $5.6 million was allocated for employee “retention stipends” of $4,500 a year for three years. The district has “around 500 staff,” according to J.P. O’Hare, spokesman for the state education department. He cited federal guidance allowing retention bonuses as a way to reopen schools and provide stability for students and staff.

But the state put the brakes on at least one planned expenditure. It rejected the district’s initial plan to use relief funds to build a wellness center, according to the Times Herald-Record, which covers New York City’s northwest suburbs.

The department declined to answer questions about any of the district’s purchases or whether it had concerns about potential conflicts of interest, but said Kiryas Joel was selected for more aggressive monitoring based on risk. 

Kristina Naplatarski, a spokeswoman for the state comptroller’s office, which conducted the 2017 audit and issued in March noting the urgency of spending COVID relief money to address learning loss, declined to comment on the issue because they had not “recently audited the school district.”

The district did spend $3,000 to hire a well-known Washington, D.C., law firm that specializes in federal compliance and audit preparation as part of its COVID relief spending. Bonnie Graham, a partner at Brustein and Manasevit, would not answer questions about the specific work the firm did for Kiryas Joel.

‘Fiscal stress’

The 74’s reporting on Kiryas Joel is part of an ongoing effort to track how districts around the nation are spending $3.4 billion in COVID funds. On Nov. 1, a member of the district’s staff confirmed that Petlin, the superintendent, received The 74’s original open records request. But he and Kamensky, the deputy superintendent who prepared forms for the state related to the funds, never followed up, despite repeated attempts to reach them.

This isn’t the first time Petlin failed to comply with the . In 2008, the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative think tank, sued the district after it didn’t turn over employee contracts as part of a public records request.

This also isn’t the first time Kiryas Joel received a disproportionately large influx of federal cash. In 2010, the district got $1.6 million in the federal competition — more than the majority of New York districts. But when the funds ran out three years later, the state comptroller found the district to be in “significant fiscal stress.” , Petlin noted that the district’s financial condition had improved between 2013 and 2016 because it was maintaining adequate reserves.

Early in the pandemic, however, the state again listed the district as largely for its reliance on cash to pay monthly expenses and short-term debt.  

The focus on the district’s relief spending comes amid renewed attention to the poor academic performance of students who attend private schools in the village and other ultra-Orthodox communities in New York state. A found that students who attend yeshivas — many of whom also attend district public schools for remedial services — are failing to gain the foundations of a secular education, with little ability to spell or do basic math.

Weber, with Young Advocates for Fair Education, said she knows parents in Kiryas Joel who worry that their children who attend yeshivas are not learning the skills necessary to be employed and function as adults.

“I have parents calling me from there crying and begging, ‘What are you going to do about this?’” she said.

‘This educational experiment’

The creation of this most unusual school district just an hour north of New York City grew out of tensions with its neighbors.

Before Kiryas Joel created its own school system, students who needed special education attended public schools in the neighboring Monroe-Woodbury Central School District. 

But conflicts arose when schools didn’t accommodate the Hasidic families’ religious practices — like wanting women bus drivers for girls and men for the boys. A new school system, leaders argued, would support its traditions and shelter students from ridicule. 

New York Gov. Mario Cuomo signed legislation creating the district in 1989. , then-executive director of the state’s school board’s association, sued on the grounds that it violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court agreed. In a 6-3 decision, former Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “There is more than a fine line between the voluntary association that leads to a political community comprised of people who share a common religious faith, and the forced separation that occurs when the government draws explicit political boundaries on the basis of peoples’ faith. In creating the district in question, New York crossed that line.”

But the political fight waged on. Because their residents vote as a bloc at the direction of their most senior religious leaders, Kiryas Joel and other ultra-Orthodox communities have traditionally over New York politicians. The Hasidic sects can both block legislation they deem unfavorable and cement support for causes they want championed.

After the Supreme Court defeat and subsequent legal battles, New York lawmakers went through several rounds of legislation before they finally adopted a law that allowed Kiryas Joel’s one-of-a-kind school district to survive subsequent legal challenges. 

Today, the relationship between Kiryas Joel and Monroe-Woodbury is more “collegial,” according to Superintendent Elsie Rodriguez. In fact, the two districts now have a reverse arrangement in which Monroe-Woodbury pays Kiryas Joel to serve 23 of its special education students.

Petlin, meanwhile, remains Kiryas Joel’s most outspoken advocate. In on the school district’s 30th anniversary in 2020, he wrote: “We have proven that this educational experiment works, contrary to the naysayers of yesterday and today.”

LINCOLN — Nebraska will soon allow public tax credits for private school education, after the governor signed the bill into law Tuesday.

Gov. Jim Pillen signed , the seven-years-long fight led by State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn on the “Opportunity Scholarships” initiative. Lawmakers gave last week on a 33-11 vote.

In its first year, LB 753 would set aside $25 million in tax credits toward scholarships designed to support families of students who otherwise could not attend private schools — a “choice” between public and private schools.

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“Now when a child in your family or your neighbor’s child or their niece or nephew needs help, you’ll be able to point them in a place where they can find hope,” Linehan said at the bill’s signing.

The bill sets up a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals or corporations who donate to a “scholarship granting organization” distributing such scholarships for parochial and private schools.

Depending on demand, the $25 million limit could grow to $100 million a year.

While there is option enrollment, allowing students to “option” into a different public school district, there is no similar method of allowing funds to support families for private education.

The Nebraska State Education Association has already vowed to work to repeal the law and has laid the groundwork for collecting voter signatures to place the issue on the ballot. 

Opponents, including the NSEA, argue taxpayer dollars should instead be invested in strengthening public schools, which “are open to all children, subject to state curriculum standards and supported by the vast majority of Nebraskans in annual polls.”

“Voucher tax schemes like LB 753 funnel money away from our already-underfunded public schools and children and give tax dollars to private schools, including those that discriminate against children and their families,” states the for “Support Our Schools Nebraska,” the organization seeking to overturn the law.

Pillen said the teacher’s union is trying to “shoot at” LB 753, which could be a “key part” of the state’s future.

“Last time I checked, we’re supposed to support every one of our kids so they get the education that they deserve to become an incredible Nebraskan and give back to the state of Nebraska,” Pillen said.

State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, whose support of LB 753 became pivotal to its passage, quoted Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X in saying that “education is our passport to the future and that tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”

Wayne said his community cannot wait 50 years for changes in the public education system, which is “not a negative or a knock on public schools.”

“This is actually a way for us to empower parents to make sure they can control their educational outcomes within their community regardless of their income level,” Wayne said.

Stand For Schools, an organization that advocates for public schools and public school funding, said in a statement that LB 753 would instead lead to the defunding of public schools.

The organization criticized the measure as benefiting primarily religious institutions, which could lead to discrimination against students, families and staff.

“Together with the Support Our Schools Nebraska coalition, we will ensure LB 753 is on the 2024 ballot so that voters can have a say in the future of their community schools,” the Stand For Schools statement reads.

The Nebraska Catholic Conference’s Jeremy Ekeler also spoke Tuesday in support of LB 753.

“Kids get one shot at an education, and we must all protect the rights of parents in choosing the best education for their children,” Ekeler said in a statement.

According to Pillen, the bill’s $25 million credits are a “drop in the bucket” compared to new funding for public schools and the state’s overall budget.

Nebraska children need extraordinary public and private education, he said, with LB 753 seeking to support children in poverty or foster care and those who need a different setting.

“This is not about who’s better or who’s worse,” Pillen said. “It’s about the right fit for our kids.”

Tanya Santos, principal of Holy Name School in Omaha, said her children and grandchildren attended a mix of public and private schools. But as a single mother, she said, she wouldn’t have been able to send her children to private school if not for scholarships and financial aid.

Santos said the “historic signing” of LB 753 will give future opportunities to all Nebraska youths, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

“Our kids are now going to have an opportunity for hope and not just the idea of hope of imagining a better future but the intention and the purpose to attain that better future based upon this hope,” Santos said.

LB 753 will go into effect about three months after the Legislature adjourns, which is slated for either this week or next.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Even more troubling: Our shows that many of these proponents have one particular religious affiliation in mind.

Our home state of is a good example. Under newly passed legislation, Iowa families are eligible to receive $7,598 a year in an education savings account for private school tuition. According to a , all but six of Iowa’s 183 private schools have a religious affiliation. 

A asked 1,000 adults 18 years of age or older whether states should be allowed to subsidize religious education with public funds. Fifty-five percent of Americans said they should not. The major exceptions to this fact: Republicans and evangelical Christians. Majorities of both groups favor the policy.

But our research found that support for school choice programs isn’t just about providing options for families of all religious backgrounds — it is about the unspoken assumption that the beneficiaries of these programs are private Christian schools. Respondents to our poll were split into two groups at random. One group was asked if they would favor using taxpayer funds to support students who attend private religious schools, with no particular faith mentioned. The other half was asked the same question, prefaced with the statement, “Across the United States, there are private religious schools affiliated with the Muslim, Jewish and Christian traditions.”

While 55% of respondents opposed funding private religious education in both versions of the question, Republicans’ support for providing taxpayer funds to religious schools fell by nearly 10 points, from 60% to a bare majority of 51%, when they were informed that there are Muslim and Jewish schools in addition to Christian options. We observed a similar decline in support among evangelical Christians; 65% supported providing public funds answering the generic version of the question, compared with 53% responding to the multi-religious version.

Efforts to pass school choice legislation have risen to prominence as public K-12 education has increasingly become the subject of partisan and ideological conflict over the teaching of topics like gender identity and the history of racism in America. The response in many Republican-led states has been a two-pronged effort to more tightly regulate classroom lessons and library materials in the public school system, while giving parents greater support for moving their children into private schools.

The fact that so many of these are Christian-affiliated explains why providing state funding for private education has been a longstanding goal of the Christian conservatives who form a core part of the Republican Party’s base. But the United States is a . While many Americans are likely familiar with a private Christian school in their local community, far fewer are likely to have encountered any of the country’s 1,300 or so private Jewish and Muslim K-12 schools.

While perhaps the strongest advocates of choice are not considering them in their efforts, non-Christian schools would indeed be eligible to benefit from state-funded school choice programs. This raises the question: Do the most vocal school choice advocates genuinely support educational choice — including by funding Jewish and Muslim schools? Or is “choice” really just code for “Christian”?

These research findings offer some much-needed clarity about the way Americans think about programs that fund private schools on the public dime. When framed in terms of their practical effect of paying for religious education, school choice programs are unpopular with the American public. Going a step further, Republicans and evangelical Christians — the main advocates of school choice legislation — view the idea much less favorably when they’re reminded that “choice” doesn’t just mean Christian.

Ultimately, pulling back the veil on the politics of school choice reveals that the American public is in dire need of an honest conversation about K-12 education. This is one place to start.

A bill that would to all students regardless of their family’s income moved forward in the Senate on Wednesday.

The chamber’s committee on education gave the bill a favorable report. Next, the bill must go to the Senate appropriations committee.

, “Choose Your School, Choose Your Future,” was filed by Republicans last month. At the time, President Pro Tem , said the bill would be the “largest expansion of school choice” since the state started the  10 years ago.

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“Today’s a great day for kids – and that’s what this bill is about,” said , at a press conference before Wednesday’s education committee. “The Opportunity Scholarship, as we proposed, has no caps. So everyone that hears me today is eligible for the opportunity scholarship, as long as you live in North Carolina.”

The Opportunity Scholarship program currently helps families who make below a certain income level pay tuition and fees at qualifying nonpublic schools, according to the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA), which administers the program. During the 2022-23 school year, the scholarship.

SB406, if passed, would eliminate income eligibility requirements for the program, guaranteeing up to a 45% scholarship to all N.C. students. It also eliminates the requirement that a student needs to have previously attended a public school.

Supporters of the bill say it will guarantee school choice for all North Carolina families.

Others say the bill could pose a threat to overall funding for public schools and .

As EdNC previously reported, in  where significant policy changes are implemented that could impact average daily membership (ADM), stabilization funds have been provided for districts. This bill does not appear to include such funding.

On Wednesday, the education committee approved the bill with two amendments – adding more funds to the program, and delaying the start of access to vouchers for all families to the 2024-25 school year.

Students will be awarded scholarships based on their free-and-reduced lunch status, Lee said. After prior recipients are awarded, at least 50% of the remaining funds must go to students who qualify for free or reduced lunch, the bill says.

Awards go up to $6,492 for the 2023-2024 school year, . The projected average award is $5,600, Lee said.

Here is a look at the breakdown of award tiers proposed in the bill:

And here is a breakdown of the increased funding to the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Fund Reserve outlined in the revised bill:

In addition to expanding Opportunity Scholarships, SB406 also requires local school boards to create a three-year graduation track for high school students. Students who opt for that track – and who also seek a degree, diploma, or certificate at an eligible postsecondary institution – will be eligible for “early graduate scholarships” based on financial need.

‘Backpack funding’

Last week, more than 200 bills were filed at the General Assembly – Several of those bills involved the expansion of school choice.

Last Tuesday, Rep. Tricia Cotham filed the for “Choose Your School, Choose Your Future.” Cotham, a former educator and assistant principal who was elected as a Democrat in Mecklenburg, announced her switch . The move in the state legislature.

On Wednesday, Cotham said the bill “is about families being able to make the best decisions for their child.”

“I started off really anti-school choice for a while when I first entered the General Assembly,” Cotham said at the press conference.

Then, she said on Wednesday, she started thinking about where her own children would go to school. Eventually, she opted for her son to attend a private school.

“That’s where my policy really started to change,” she said. “Because as a policymaker and as a mom, I’m also not a hypocrite. I do believe that as policymakers and legislators, if we have the ability to send our children to a private school or to a charter, then we cannot say to others, well, you can’t.”

, which would also allow homeschooled students to receive the vouchers, was also filed this month.

On Wednesday, all public speakers voiced support for the expansion of the program, including parents and a student from private school. There were no public speakers from public schools.

Democratic lawmakers raised questions about expanding the scholarship beyond low-income families in North Carolina.

“Over time, we’ve realized that it’s important for all families to have choice,” Lee said during the committee meeting. “And we’ve talked to a lot of families, and some families are here today that don’t meet those eligibility criteria that would never have the opportunity to attend a private school.”

During the press conference, reporters also raised questions about the Republicans’ support to expand private school vouchers while blocking the Leandro plan. Earlier this month, a state superior court judge ruled that the state still owes for this school year and last school year.

“Rather than expanding a program that by its definition cannot support every student, let’s invest in our public schools so students have safe schools, inviting classrooms, a well-rounded curriculum, class sizes that are small enough for one-on-one attention, and support services such as health care, nutrition, and after-school programs for students who need them,” N.C. Association of Educators President Tamika Walker Kelly said in a statement Wednesday.

Lee said relying on a plan filed over 30 years ago was “laughable” and that the state already fulfilled many items laid out in the plan.

He went on to say that many Republican lawmakers believe the state should move toward “backpack funding,” where students are funded wherever they go to school. He said he wants to see “uniform funding among all students,” mentioning weighted funding.

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans filed , which would abolish “all funds, grants, allotments, and other sources of funding that expend their funds from the State Public School Fund,” to enact a weighted student funding model.

“I do think over time we will start establishing weighted student formulas, and those formulas will be the baseline to establish for children,” Lee said. “So it’s a long way of saying that backpack funding for families is where we’re heading with respect to all students.”

As soon as there is a fiscal note that compares current funding by district compared with funding by district if SB670 were to pass, EdNC will cover it.

Questions about accountability

Under current , private schools are required to administer “at least once in each school year, a nationally standardized test or other nationally standardized equivalent measurement selected by the chief administrative officer of such school, to all students enrolled or regularly attending grades three, six and nine.”

Each school must make and maintain records of the results for one year after testing, for “annual inspection by a duly authorized representative of the State of North Carolina.”

In addition, a nonpublic school that accepts eligible students receiving scholarship grants must comply with , among others:

• Contract with a certified public accountant to perform a financial review, consistent with generally accepted accounting principles, for each school year in which the school enrolls 70 or more students receiving scholarship grants or scholarship funds awarded by the Authority.
• A nonpublic school that accepts students receiving scholarship grants shall not require any additional fees based on the status of the student as a scholarship grant recipient.
• A nonpublic school enrolling more than 25 students whose tuition and fees are paid in whole or in part with a scholarship grant shall report to the Authority on the aggregate standardized test performance of eligible students.

, said such requirements don’t let lawmakers see how private schools perform compared to public schools, which must record and publish standardized testing data.

“We have a lot of choice already without this bill, which I think does a lot of damage to public education,” she said. “If we are going to open it up and balloon the payments the way this bill would do, are we now finally ready to agree to some accountability?”

Marcus also said some religious schools reject certain students, specifically listing LGBTQ+ students and students with a different religious background as an example. Public funds shouldn’t go to such schools, she said.

“The ultimate metric of accountability is the family and the student,” Lee said in response.

Earlier this month, House Democrats filed , which lays out additional testing requirements for the program.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

LINCOLN — Nebraska would no longer be the only state in the union that doesn’t provide some sort of “school choice” under a bill sent to final-round approval Thursday.

Legislative Bill 753 would permit state tax credits for donations to organizations that provide scholarships to kids to attend private and parochial schools. An estimated 5,000 students could switch to private schools, a legislative fiscal note says, and some senators predict it would lead to opening of more private and religious schools.

Initially, $25 million a year would be allowed for the credits, but the credits could eventually rise to $100 million a year. That would be more than the state spends a year on the State Patrol ($80 million a year) but about 10% of what Nebraska spends each year on state aid to K-12 public schools.

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Advocates: Lets students have a choice

Advocates portrayed the bill as a way to allow students, particularly low-income kids, the opportunity to attend a private school if they aren’t thriving in a public institution.

They cited three inner-city Catholic schools in Omaha where almost all students qualify for free school lunches, where very few are Catholic and where 94% graduate from high school on time, compared to 78% in the Omaha Public Schools.

“This bill allows children to find the best school that fits their needs, even if they can’t afford tuition,” said State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, who has worked seven years to pass a school choice measure.

LB 753, which has the support of Gov. Jim Pillen, advanced from second-round debate on a 33-11 vote.

A legal ‘workaround’

Four hours of debate on the bill focused mainly on its fiscal impact on public school funding and whether the measure was a “workaround” to provide public funds to private schools.

Two attorneys opposed to the bill, Sens. George Dungan of Lincoln and John Cavanaugh of Omaha, questioned whether LB 753 violated a state constitutional prohibition on providing public aid to religious institutions.

Dungan cited a in February by Anthony Schutz of the University of Nebraska College of Law that questioned whether the bill was constitutional.

It’s not “cut and dried,” the senator said, adding that LB 753 appeared to be a “workaround” to make it constitutional.

But Linehan disputed that, citing Nebraska Supreme Court rulings that stated that it was OK to provide public funds to private schools.

Not an ‘appropriation’

She said LB 753 would not be an “appropriation” of state funds because it’s a tax credit.

“It’s not an appropriation if we never collect the money,” Linehan said.

The tax credits, under the bill, would not go directly to schools but to “scholarship granting organizations,” which would provide scholarships, estimated to average $5,000 a year, to students.

Critics said that providing tax credits to private schools would reduce funds for public schools and might stress the state budget eventually.

A , prepared earlier this month, stated that if 5,000 students, as projected, switch from public to private schools in the state’s 11 largest school districts, it would reduce state aid to those schools by nearly $12 million due to the loss of students. But if the switches happened in a broader group of districts, there would be a mix of school aid winners and losers, with a projected overall hike in school aid of $92,000.

North Dakota bill awaits signature

Nebraska and North Dakota have been the only states that didn’t provide some government funds for private/parochial education, but on Thursday, the North Dakota House gave final approval for a bill that provides funds for students to attend private schools.

The powerful state teachers union, the Nebraska State Education Association, has pledged to launch an initiative petition drive and put the issue before state voters if LB 753 passes.

After Thursday’s vote, NSEA President Jenni Benson said legislators aren’t listening to Nebraska voters because a majority of them oppose giving public tax dollars to private schools.

“Supporters of LB 753 claim it’s all sunshine and rainbows but the reality is LB 753 is a tax voucher scheme that will drain funding from our public schools and give it to unaccountable private schools that discriminate against kids,” Benson said in a press release.

Linehan, during Thursday’s debate, disputed that, saying that private schools must be approved by the state. Other supporters said the state offers all kinds of tax credits, and it could be argued that every one takes away funds from public schools.

A mayor fear of school choice opponents is that once the state opens the door to school choice, the program will grow and lead to approval of charter schools and vouchers — something supporters of LB 753 discount.

Two senators who represent North Omaha, Justin Wayne and Terrell McKinney, have supported the bill as giving children in their districts an option to public schools.

Another supporter of the bill, Omaha Sen. Brad von Gillern, said he expected that passage of the measure would aid in the construction of more private schools.

Von Gillern, who said he served as an elder at West Omaha’s Lifegate Church until October, said a coalition of groups, including Lifegate, is talking about opening a Christian high school in Omaha. The elementary school at Lifegate, he added, has a waiting list.

“There’s definitely a need,” von Gillern said.

The senator said he didn’t consider his former post with the church and voting on LB 753 as any kind of conflict of interest. The Opportunity Scholarships would go to students, not the church or school, von Gillern said, and the success of a Christian school would be determined by how well it educates students.

Lawmakers did adopt one amendment to LB 753 on Thursday that had been suggested by Sens. Jana Hughes of Seward and Barry DeKay of Niobrara.

DeVos group spent heavily

Hughes said she was concerned that funds given to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) didn’t create a “tax shelter.” Her amendment requires that unused scholarship funds would be transferred to other SGOs or given to the state general fund.

DeKay said his part of the amendment would insure that there was a re-evaluation of the opportunity scholarship program after three years to ensure it was improving educational outcomes.

A similar opportunity scholarship bill failed to pass last year, but a national school choice group, , spent heavily last fall to get state senators elected who support the idea.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

LINCOLN — State Sen. Suzanne Geist of Lincoln said she realized last year she could not use an educational savings plan to support her grandchildren’s private K-12 tuition costs.

Congress approved an expansion in 2018 for NEST 529 plans under the College Savings Plan Program, but Nebraska is one of 10 states that lag in allowing the plans to also apply to K-12 private education.

, proposed by Geist, would adopt the federal standard and allow Nebraskans to receive tax deductions for their investments, which is allowed for higher education in the state.

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“This is such a common sense request to ask our state to conform with the federal guidelines so grandparents like me can help their kids who cannot afford the choice that they want to make for their school to be able to make that choice,” Geist said.

Opponents said the bill would incentivize private education and families who send their kids to private schools, without support for private schools.

There is a limit of $10,000 per beneficiary per taxable year.

Geist added that because families would invest their private dollars, the bill would not impact public school funding.

Nebraskans can create 529 plans in states where the change is allowed if they want the investment for K-12 schools.

However, Nebraskans could not capitalize on other states’ tax deductions.

Preventing a ‘slip through the cracks’

Heather Schmidt, whose daughter has dyslexia, said she enrolled her child in a private school so she would receive additional support.

But Schmidt and her husband had to pay the out-of-pocket costs without additional support or tax benefits.

“Any extra savings for our future or our children’s future education is put on hold,” Schmidt told the Revenue Committee on Thursday. “Because nothing is more important than making sure our children are educated every step of the way. We won’t let any of them slip through the cracks.”

Elizabeth Davids, an educator, said K-12 education is essential because it’s the point where children form their “primary worldviews” and where they establish a foundation.

Davids said a child should go where they can be successful, and if they do not end up going to college, a 529 plan could be “worthless.”

‘Pass-through entity’

Connie Knoche, education policy director for the OpenSky Policy Institute, said the bill would create a new tax benefit and subsidize private K-12 plans.

“LB 165 will turn NEST into a pass-through entity so that families with children in private school can and will use these accounts to receive an immediate tax deduction,” Knoche said.

Dunixi Guereca, executive director for Stand For Schools, which advocates for public schools and public school funding, said the bill could exclusively benefit already wealthy families.

Geist told the committee there are better ways to “make a buck” than investing in 529 plans for the tax deduction.

Tonack said there could be costs for families attending public schools, too, such as for industrial or performing arts.

She added that 529 accounts do extend to college apprenticeships or student loan debt repayments. She encouraged the committee to also extend expansion to families of K-12 students.

“It should make the pot grow just a little bit,” Tonack said.

Geist said she is working on an amendment that would conform to federal language related to  allowing the 529 expansion to apply to public schools.

When asked, Tonack said that would make the NSEA neutral on Geist’s bill; Guereca said Stand For Schools would still be opposed.

‘Very skeptical’ of revenue decrease

A fiscal note from the Nebraska Department of Revenue through the next four fiscal years estimates the bill could lead to revenue decreases:

FY 2023-24: $2,539,000FY 2024-25: $5,669,000FY 2025-26: $7,921,000FY 2026-27: $7,829,000

State Treasurer John Murante said, however, he’s “very skeptical” about the estimates.

They assume that 50% of all eligible Nebraska families would have a 529 account next year and that the program would grow in future years.

Murante said such revenue decreases have not occurred in the states that adopted the federal standard and contended the department’s estimates were overstated.

Jay Steinacher, who oversees the 529 savings plans offered through Union Bank and Trust, said Nebraska has more than 300,000 accounts, which total more than $6 billion.

That places Nebraska 18th in the country for total assets, Steinacher said, even though Nebraska is 37th in population.

He said this can be attributed to a strong investment lineup, low costs and a competitive plan structure, but he said momentum slows when there is a limitation on how accounts may be used in the state.

“If they’ve been saving for their kids’ education, and they want to use their own money to pay for K-12 tuition, from our point of view, that’s their business,” Murante said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

After years of debate and a decisive election with school choice at center stage, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed her private school scholarship program into law Tuesday.

Students and staff of Iowa private schools gathered around the lectern in the Capitol rotunda as Reynolds and supporters celebrated passing the legislation, which less than 12 hours earlier. The governor thanked Republican lawmakers, “school choice” advocates and parents for their work in getting the bill through the legislative process.

“I urged the General Assembly to think big and to aim high, to ignore the hysteria that always accompanies school change,” Reynolds said. “In passing the Students First Act that is what you did, and I cannot think of a more worthy cause to aim high and dream big for than the future of our children.”

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The Iowa House and Senate spent nearly 10 hours debating the legislation, which Reynolds named as her top priority for the 2023 legislative session. The law establishes an education savings account (ESA) program for K-12 students, giving students an account of $7,598 each year to use for private school tuition and associated costs.

Starting the 2023-2024 school year, all kindergarteners, Iowa public school students and private school students with a family income of 300% or below the federal poverty line will be eligible to receive funds from the program. The income eligibility expands to 400% of the federal poverty line in the second year and there is no income limit starting in the third year.

While Republicans celebrated the victory, Democrats and public school advocates continued to express disappointment in the legislation. Democratic Sen. Claire Celsi of West Des Moines shouted, “Nobody wants vouchers!” from the rotunda balcony. She was drowned out by a standing ovation for the governor, who said, “We will never give up” on school choice legislation.

Critics said the legislation would harm public schools, especially those in rural areas. Iowa State Education Association President Mike Beranek said by passing the governor’s bill, legislators were ignoring their constituents’ wishes. Almost three-fourths of Iowa public schools are counties with no option for private schools, he said, and this legislation prioritizes private school students over the 92% of Iowa students in public schools.

“Make no mistake, this is not a war between public schools and private schools,” Beranek said in a statement. “It is a conflict between how taxpayer money is spent on private schools without equal access and no accountability or taxpayer oversight. Elected officials have a responsibility to serve all the people of our great state. This legislation serves just a few, with all the people’s money.”

But the governor said the bill helps Iowa’s public education system and teachers by allowing schools to put certain unspent categorical funds, such as dollars for talented and gifted programs, toward teacher salaries.

“We’re gonna continue to work with them and see if there’s other things that we can do to help so it’s not a one and done,” Reynolds told reporters. “We’re gonna continue to monitor it. Just make sure that we’re meeting the mark and doing what we intended.”

Estimates from the governor’s office and Legislative Services Agency estimate the program will cost $106.9 million in the upcoming fiscal year, and will cost roughly $345 million per year once income restrictions are fully phased out. But Democrats questioned whether the state will see additional costs when working with a third-party vendor to administer the program.

The governor said a request for proposals (RFP) on the program contract will be posted Tuesday, which will contain details on potential associated costs. It will also address concerns for transparency, she said. Other states with private school scholarship programs, , have had instances of educational companies or parents using state funds fraudulently.

The state’s contract will put “parameters in place” to give the state recourse if problems occur with Iowa’s program, she said.

“We’re going to make sure that cybersecurity is taken into account,” she said. “We want to make sure that we do have transparency and accountability in place, so that we can monitor it to make sure that there isn’t any fraud. And that’s why we’re really being very purposeful about issuing the RFP.”

The ESA program is not the end of the road for Republicans’ education reform goals this session. Reynolds also highlighted in her a renewed push for “parental rights” in public schools, calling for increased transparency measures such making all class materials and student records accessible to parents.

House Republicans have also focused on curriculum and LGBTQ+ issues in Iowa public schools. Proposals include requiring school districts to get written consent from a child’s parent or guardian before providing any accommodations in using a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns, as well as banning instruction or material on sexual orientation or gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade.

Republicans brought up LGBTQ+ issues in public schools as a reason why parents demanded alternatives to Iowa’s public school system in the ESA program debates Monday. Sen. Jesse Green, R-Boone, said some Iowa public schools’ policies, such as letting transgender children use the restrooms and locker rooms which match their gender identity, prevent Iowans from having their children educated “without violating their values.”

“If we can’t trust some of our public schools on biology in the bathroom, what makes us believe that we can trust those same schools on biology in the classroom?” Green said. “… Yet on something so fundamental is basic biology, (parents) currently have no choice in public schools.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

As Democrats argue Gov. Kim Reynolds’ private school scholarship program would take away funding from Iowa’s public schools, Republicans are pointing to the governor’s proposed budget as proof that support for Iowa’s K-12 system remains strong.

Reynolds is proposing a budget of nearly $8.5 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, an increase over the current year of roughly $300 million. More than half of the state spending proposed is for education.

Over the next four years, the education savings account (ESA) program would cost $918 million, according to estimates by the governor’s office. Democrats and public school advocates say that is nearly $1 billion in state funds being diverted from public schools, but Republicans argue that it is new, unrelated spending.

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In the same four year period, the state is estimated to spend $15.2 billion on public education, with expectations of increasing K-12 spending by roughly 2.5% each year. But Democrats said that Iowa has underfunded education for years, and that the money put toward the governor’s plan should go toward filling funding gaps in public schools.

Margaret Buckton, a lobbyist with the Urban Education Network and the Rural School Advocates of Iowa, told legislators Wednesday that Iowa’s education spending has lagged inflation for both per-pupil costs and the cost of “doing the business of school” in the past decade.

“Our major concern is a program like this, that phases in over four years with hundreds of millions of dollars of obligation on part of the state, that hits the balance sheet exactly when the historic tax cuts of last year reduce state revenues by 1.8 billion, means that our school districts are concerned there will never be increases in the state cost per-pupil adequate to provide the programs that our students in public schools need,” Buckton said.

Grassley said no matter how much money the Legislature designates for state supplemental aid to public schools, Democrats will always say its not enough.

“That’s a consistent argument that we’ve always faced,” Grassley said. “We’re spending more money on public education now than we ever have in the history of this state. … Clearly we’ve made it a priority as part of our budgets, I don’t see (ESAs) being one of those things that is a drain on that.”

Other priorities for 2023

While her private school scholarship program is a central focus this year, Reynolds has also announced plans to restructure Iowa’s system of government agencies and departments as well as enacting policies she said will help rural health care systems, from funding obstetrics fellowships to tort reform.

Here are some takeaways in the governor’s proposed budget for fiscal 2024, which begins July 1, 2023:

Overall spending: Reynolds is recommending Iowa increase its net spending from an estimated $8.2 billion in 2023 to nearly $8.5 billion in FY 2024. That 3.3% growth is greater than the previous year’s estimated growth of less than 1%. The rise was higher than in previous years because of increased federal aid disbursements, but the state government will still leave nearly $2 billion unspent from Iowa’s general fund budget.

Property taxes: A notable omission from Reynolds’ Condition of the State address and proposed budget was changes to Iowa’s property tax code, which legislative Republicans have highlighted as their tax policy focus in 2023. Replacements for property tax revenue were not included in Reynolds’ budget proposal this year, but Grassley said tax policy changes are typically one of the areas that take the most time for the Legislature to work through.

“I hope we didn’t build a false expectation of tax policy that it’s done immediately in every session that we did last year,” Grassley said. “… I think you’re gonna see us hopefully fund some bills sooner than later as well, that are going to begin that conversation around property tax.”

Reynolds did say she hopes to improve the “affordability of child care through property tax parity” for both commercial and in-home care providers, but did not mention other potential property tax reforms.

Education: More than half, 56.4%, of Reynolds’ proposed budget is appropriated to education.

Private school scholarships: The private school scholarship proposal Reynolds laid out as her top priority for this year’s session is built into her budget. She has allocated $106.9 million for the education savings accounts, or ESA, program, in its first year. The governor’s office calculated that amount using data on how many Iowa kindergarteners are enrolled in private schools and how many current private school students are under 300% of the federal poverty line. The governor’s office based its estimate on the assumption that about 1% of public school students in grades 1-12 are likely to transfer.

State aid:  The budget overall includes a 2.5% increase in funding for K-12 public schools. That includes an $82 million increase for the State Foundation School Aid and over $700,000 more for the transportation equity fund, but no other changes in PK-12 spending from the current fiscal year.

Higher education: The Iowa Board of Regents asked the Legislature to for the state’s three public universities, but Reynolds’ proposal would allocate less than half that amount, granting a $12.5 million increase. That’s more than the Regents received in previous years, but board members said they this year to both keep up with inflation and make up for underfunding in previous appropriations cycles.

Agency consolidation: The governor also said she plans to take on a major internal project for Iowa’s government: restructuring the state’s system of agencies, with a planned consolidation from 37 to 16 cabinet-level departments. While she said this would not result in loss of funding or services, she said the government would save money through combining offices, selling land and cutting full-time equivalent positions that are currently vacant. The governor’s office estimates its reorganization will save Iowa more than $214 million in the course of four years, with an estimated $73.5 million in savings in  year one.

Rural health care: As the state continues to struggle with workforce shortages, Reynolds proposed expanding Iowa’s existing apprenticeship programs for in-demand fields that require training. A large focus was on the state’s Iowa Health Careers Registered Apprenticeship Program, which said will expand to cover more nursing programs, EMR, EMT, and paramedic and direct care professional certification, as well as behavioral health training. This expansion would be met with an increase in funding from $3 million to $15 million, the governor proposed.

Iowa also faces a shortage of OB-GYN health care providers specifically. The governor announced her plans to use $560,000 to fund four obstetrics fellowships for family medicine physicians, who would be required to commit to practicing in rural and underserved communities for five years following the fellowship.

Additionally, Reynolds called for the creation of two new regional “Centers of Excellence,” health care providers in rural Iowa that provide specialized services from cancer treatment, maternal health programs and surgery. Her budget would provide $575,000 to fund the new centers.

Abortion alternatives: While Reynolds and Republican leadership have said they plan to hold off on further abortion legislation until the Iowa Supreme Court makes a decision in the state’s law banning the procedure after six weeks, Reynolds did say she plans to increase funding available for abortion alternative organizations this year. Reynolds called for growing the “More Options for Maternal Support,” or MOMS program funding from $500,000 to $2 million.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

The Kentucky Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a Kentucky law creating a generous tax credit to help families pay for tuition at private schools.

The cites a long line of precedent reinforcing the Kentucky Constitution’s ban on the state financially supporting private schools in declaring the Education Opportunity Account Act unconstitutional.

The tax credit was available to any taxpayer who contributed to a fund that would make tuition assistance available to families.

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“The statute creates a system whereby any Kentucky taxpayers who want to fund EOAs (education opportunity accounts) can send their money . . . for use at nonpublic schools instead of paying a comparable amount which they owe in Kentucky income tax,” wrote Justice Lisabeth T. Hughes in an opinion signed by all seven justices.

“Simply stated, it puts the Commonwealth in the business of raising ‘sum(s) … for education other than in common schools,’” which the Constitution prohibits, wrote Hughes.

“Kentucky taxpayers who participate in the EOA program get essentially dollar-for-dollar credit (generally 95%) against the income taxes they would otherwise contribute to the Commonwealth,” the opinion said.

The lawsuit challenging the 2021 law was filed by the a group made up of most of Kentucky’s public school districts. Advocates for had lobbied for the law.

Implementation of the law was put on hold after Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled it unconstitutional last year.

Following the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision, Attorney General Cameron, who had defended the law before the Supreme Court, released this statement:

“We’re saddened that parents across the Commonwealth won’t be able to use the needs-based funding provided by Kentucky’s Education Opportunity Account Program to expand learning opportunities for their children. Our office is committed to helping ensure the best educational opportunity for every child.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on and .

The Alaska Department of Law issued an opinion Monday saying public money can be spent for home-school students to attend one or two classes in a private school, but can’t be used for most of a student’s private school tuition.

The says that it’s sometimes legal to use through the state’s program that pays for students to attend a correspondence school, or home-school.

“But the more it looks like you’re just trying to send your kid to private school and get subsidized by the state, I think that’s when you start getting into unconstitutional territory,” said Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills, who wrote the opinion.

The opinion found that public money may be spent for individual materials and services from a private school as long as it supports a public correspondence education. But spending public money “to pay most or all, in particular, of a private school’s full-time tuition is very likely unconstitutional,” Mills said during a media briefing Monday afternoon.

According to the opinion: “Using allotment money for one or two classes to support a public correspondence school program is likely constitutional, whereas using public school allotment money to pay for most or all of a private school’s tuition would not be.”

School districts in Alaska can establish state-funded public correspondence schools for families who choose to home-school their children. Correspondence programs can offer what’s known as an allotment program, which reimburses families for educational-related needs of the student, like books, classes, school supplies, technology support, tutoring, music or activity lessons.

While allows families to purchase nonsectarian services and materials from a public, private, or religious organization with a correspondence student allotment provided, the says, “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Striking a balance

Mills said the core analysis of the opinion provides guidance on a “balancing act.”

“The balancing act is determining whether any particular expenditure of public funds is really intended to supplant a public education or incentivize a private education over a public education with the backing of public dollars,” she said.

For example, “things like private tutoring, public or private college courses, extracurricular classes or sports, certain educational materials that meet the requirements of the allotment program, are all very likely constitutional, even if they may provide an incidental benefit to a private school,” Mills said.

In contrast, “using the student allotments to pay for the tuition of a student being educated full-time at a private institution would be highly unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny,” according to the opinion.

Mills said the facts of each student’s situation matter in determining if the allotment is being used properly. For instance, answers to questions like: What are the specific classes that are being paid for? How do they meet statutory requirements? How is the learning plan set up? What does the public correspondence school teachers say about how this is meeting the public education requirements?

Mills added: “You know it when you see it, like if the heart of something is really trying to provide and meet those public educational requirements, that’s a different picture than someone who really just wants to send their kid to private school, or a district that’s  trying to provide access to private schools.”

Attorney general recusal

In mid-May, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor’s wife Jodi Taylor on the Alaska Policy Forum website about her plan to seek up to $8,000 in reimbursement from public funding for their two kids attending an Anchorage private school. It was published on some Alaska news sites and blogs. Attorney General Taylor recused himself on May 21 from all matters involving correspondence school allotments and .

While the op-ed resulted in questions to the Department of Law, Mills said the department has assisted the Department of Education and Early Development on interpreting how to implement the correspondence allotment program throughout the years since its enactment in 2014.

“It kind of became clear over the course of these years and what happened earlier this summer that having a formal attorney general opinion that’s public, that could provide guidance to both the (Education) Department as well as the school districts, could be helpful,” Mills said.

To help formulate the opinion, Mills looked at minutes of the Alaska Constitutional Convention to see what the framers of the constitution said.  

“At the heart of it, I really believe the framers were concerned with supplanting a public education with a private education. That’s what their worry was,” Mills said. “That is different than supporting or supplementing a public education with the use of some private school resources.”

Mils said the opinion is for the Department of Education and Early Department and school districts with correspondence schools programs to refer to as they implement their programs.

In response to the Law Department’s opinion, the Department of Education and Early Department spokesperson said the department “is reviewing the opinion from the Department of Law and will work with districts to ensure compliance with the law and that correspondence allotments are used to reimburse only allowable expenses.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

A proposal to let all 1.1 million Arizona students use taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private school passed the Arizona House of Representatives Wednesday after two Republicans who had opposed previous efforts to expand the program changed their position. 

The Empowerment Scholarship Account program, commonly referred to as ESAs, has been narrowly implemented since its creation in 2011. Eligible students include children attending failing public schools, children whose parents are in the military, kids who are in the foster care system and students living on Native American Reservations. Currently, roughly 11,800 students are enrolled and receive the voucher money. 

���ܳ��� would allow every Arizona student to get an ESA account — including those who already attend private schools — to pay for their education.

Legislative budget analysts have said that only an estimated 25,000 students would likely take advantage of the expanded eligibility. 

ESA dollars can be  a student needs, from tuition for a private school to tutoring or to homeschooling materials. 

“If you are a millionaire or a billionaire and your kid goes to private school today, you will now receive a check to subsidize them,” Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, said. “We have one of the  ratios in this country, and what we chose to do is to make it even worse by taking more resources out of our general fund.” 

Voters could have the final say on the fate of HB2853: Save Our Schools Arizona has said it will launch a referendum campaign to repeal the expansion, if it becomes law. If the group can collect enough signatures within 90 days of the end of the legislative session, the ESA expansion wouldn’t go into effect unless voters approved it in 2024.

“The House’s passage of voter-rejected universal ESA vouchers underscores the Republican majority’s utter disregard for AZ voters,” Beth Lewis, the executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, a group that was formed to fight expansions to the ESA program, said in a statement to the Mirror. “They are bought and sold by special interests who do not have our children’s interests at heart.”

In 2017, Save Our Schools Arizona successfully referred a different ESA expansion to the ballot, and voters in 2018 overwhelmingly rejected the voucher program.

The bill passed the House 31-26, with only Republicans supporting it. It now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Gov. Doug Ducey, who has championed ESAs and other school-choice measures, would then decide whether it becomes law.

Fired up Dems

Prior to hearing the bill, the floor session was delayed as a  was debated among members that limited debate on each bill to 30 minutes, after which lawmakers would be barred from explaining their stance on bills. 

Democrats tried to force debate of the new rules, but were swiftly overruled. And members of the audience, including many teachers and public school advocates, had to be reined in by House Speaker Pro Tem Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler, as they cheered and applauded members of the Democratic caucus who spoke against the ESA bill. 

“It’s like a U2 concert in here,” Weninger quipped, reminding those in attendance to not clap or cheer. 

During the 30-minute period of debate on the ESA expansion bill, Democratic lawmakers pointed out provisions that would allow for a “predatory market” to take over and criticized the GOP’s attempt to inject accountability into the program.

The bill requires the newly eligible students to take a national standardized test every year. But those test scores would largely be kept secret: The aggregate scores at a school would only be provided to ESA parents who ask, and only if the school has at least 50 students attending with ESA funds.

The state would not be able to see those scores, which Democrats said would block lawmakers and state officials from seeing if the ESA spending was actually translating into better education. 

And that, in turn, creates a scenario where unscrupulous people could open private schools in an attempt to cash in, they said.

“There are no barriers for entry into this marketplace,” Rep. Lorenzo Sierra, D-Cashion, said. “If I am a predator looking to make money, this is how I’m going to do it.”

The lack of accountability is what . 

After the bill was considered in committee last week, Udall told the Arizona Mirror that the testing provision is too weak and “will not prevent bad actors from taking advantage of children and parents.” Instead, she said that private schools accepting ESA money ought to be required to test all of their students — and report those scores to the state. 

“Without this type of academic accountability there will be schools that open, market aggressively, and don’t teach the academics they’re being paid to teach,” she said, adding that the proposal would lead to profiteering at the expense of students and parents.

But on Wednesday, Udall voted for the bill, as did John and Osborne. Osborne was the only one of the three who explained her vote on the floor. 

“Quite frankly, there is a point when people in this body must say, we need to govern and we must listen to all the voices in this state that is very divided,” Osborne said. She thanked Rep. Ben Toma, the Peoria Republican who spearheaded the ESA bill, for his work and added that the bill includes a large portion of money for public schools, as well. That is not ture; the bill does not include any funding for public schools. 

 that would have added $400 million to K-12 funding — about half of it in a one-time boost — if the ESA expansion becomes law was passed in the same committee last week, but it was not heard on the House floor today. Toma previously said in committee that the second bill was “an incentive” to mollify ESA opponents.

Proponents of the measure said the bill is about school choice. 

“This bill has the greatest accountability of all: The parents can choose a school, they can not choose a school,” Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said. “One size does not fit all and we need to give parents and students two things…we need diversity and we need pro-choice.”

Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, said he attended both public and private schools but blamed the “woke agenda” of public schools for the legislature needing to expand ESAs for parents to have school choice for their children. 

“I don’t have any problem with our public schools, except when they go down the ‘woke agenda’ that they’ve been going down recently,” said Hoffman, who has proposed  in schools. “Public sentiment against public schools hasn’t been lower than it has been now.” 

The ESA expansion comes amid the backdrop of a historic budget surplus — an estimated $5.3 billion, or about 40% of the current year’s spending. It also comes five years after voters  to expand the voucher program. 

“This is not the same measure in 2017, it was a flawed measure,” Toma said in a closing statement on the vote. “Parents are the ultimate accountability, not the government and we should trust them to do the right thing.”

After the vote was tallied and the measure was approved the gallery began shouting “shame” at the lawmakers who then promptly took a break from considering legislation, including the state budget.