Get out your checkbooks! If the school voucher bill working its way through the legislature becomes law, millions of dollars of state funds that would otherwise be available for our public schools will be used instead to pay for private school tuition and home-schooling expenses. And when state support for our local school districts declines, property taxes inevitably rise.
Although no comprehensive financial analysis of SB 130 has yet been published, one thing is clear: it would cost far more than the voucher bill that the Legislature voted down in 2018. That bill’s impact on local taxpayers was projected to be $99 million over the first 11 years, leading conservative Rep. Neal Kurk to say, “I was not elected to downshift costs on my constituents, so I cannot support this bill.” Since eligibility requirements under SB 130 are much looser than they were under the 2018 bill, it stands to reason that the costs to the public will be significantly higher.
The sponsors of SB 130 tell us that vouchers are necessary for children who “just aren’t getting what they need” in public school. But the bill is not limited to that group. In fact, a student who has never stepped foot in a public school would be entitled to a publicly funded voucher ranging from $3,786 to $8,458 per year.
Under SB 130, if a student is excelling in public school but wants to go to private school because of its hockey team, you and I would help pay the bill. If a parent would prefer a private school because it’s located near her work place or because her child’s best friend goes there, we’d have to contribute to the tuition, no matter how impressive the local public school that we’re already paying for might be. And if a parent simply wants a religious education for his children, we’d pick up part of the tab, even if in all other ways the local public school meets their needs. Should taxpayers really underwrite all of these parental preferences?
A parent in the public school where I taught once told me that she wished there weren’t “so many immigrants” in her child’s class. SB 130 would provide public funds for her to move her child to a more homogeneous private school. Surely we taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing this kind of choice.
No human system is perfect, and I’m sure some students truly aren’t being adequately served by their public school. Mechanisms are in place to help such children, and if they aren’t working, we need to fix the problem within the public school system, to help these students as well as others who might follow. But using tax dollars to pay for every child whose parents, for whatever reason, want them to have a private education is a misguided approach that will result in reducing the resources available to the students who remain in public school.
Our public schools are already underfunded and property taxpayers are stretched to, and sometimes beyond, their limits. Right now, school budget committees are grappling with a projected $90 million loss of state funding over the coming biennium, as they try to cobble together next year’s budgets. Every dollar the state spends on vouchers is a dollar that could be used instead to help fill this hole.
We have created a public school system that’s near the top in national rankings. Unlike their private alternatives, our public schools are open to all, overseen by elected school boards, and accountable to the taxpayers who pay for them. This is what we, the community, offer to our collective children to ensure that each of them, rich or poor, can access the opportunities that education affords.
If parents prefer something else – a better sports program, a religious education, insulation from children of different backgrounds – that should be at their expense, not ours. Please urge your elected representatives to vote against SB 130.
(Mary Wilke of Concord is a retired public school teacher.)