PA: Bill Proposes $8000 Payoff To Ditch Public School

A new bill in the Pennsylvania Senate is a sort of super-voucher stripped of any pretense, because it simply pays parents to pull their child out of public school.

SB 1280 is short and sweet. Every parent who has a child not in public gets an $8000 payoff from the state.

The payoff comes in the form of a personal tax credit of $8000 per child. That's not an "up to $8000," either:

The tax credit under this section shall be applied against the taxpayer's tax liability. If the tax credit exceeds the taxpayer's tax liability, the department shall issue a refund under the procedures specified in section 346 of the Tax Reform Code of 1971.

In other words, if you  only owe $2,000 in taxes, you get a $6K check from the state. 

Governor Josh Shapiro has signaled that he does not support the speedwalked bill, which was introduced last week (June 26) and will be considered by the finance committee this morning (Wed, July 3). 

There's no income requirement for eligibility, and unlike other vouchers, there's no requirement for how the money must be spent. It's just $8000 payoff to pull out of public school. It applies equally to private school or home schooling-- just so long as you get your kid out of public education.

Maddie Hanna and Gillian McGoldrick are all over the story for the Philadelphia Inquirer (and Steven Goldrick sent up the alert on Twitter), where they get this on the nose quote:

“We’ve just gotten a signal of what the end of the road is: the destruction of public schools,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center. He called the expedited bill the “Episcopal Academy Assistance Act,” highlighting the Newtown Square private school where high school tuition tops $43,000 as one of the expensive schools that could benefit from such a proposal.

True enough. There is no pretense here of helping students from poor families get to better education. There's not even a pretense that this is taxpayer dollars directed at education. It is the baldest version of vouchers yet-- "We will pay you to abandon public education. We don't care what you do about educating your kid. Just get out of public education."

How expensive would this be? There are roughly 275,000 students in private school. Maybe 126,000 home schooled students. So that would blow a $3.2 billion hole in the state budget in a combination of taxes not collected and cash paid out. And that's just if nobody else jumped on the deal.

It's unlikely that the bill would get past the Democratic controlled House, though one never knows, and it's unlikely to get past Shapiro, who previously scrapped a proposed voucher bill.

This is based on the Oklahoma model (sponsor Senator Judy Ward pointed to Oklahoma as an example in the committee meeting Wednesday morning). 

Oklahoma's version was dressed up in lots of pretty language about families and educational choices. The Pennsylvania version is notable for how direct it is. Vouchers have usually pretended to be about "The state wants you to abandon public schools. We'll wash our hands of responsibility for providing a decent education for your child, and in return we'll cut you a check to help defray the costs, a little." 

This drops that whole game. "We'll cut you a check to just walk away from public education," is next level stuff. I want to call it a voucher, but it doesn't even pretend to be that. Just a payoff and an attempt to gut public education while washing the state's hands of even the most rudimentary attempt to help families provide an education. Here's your check, thanks for getting out, and good luck to you.

Mind you, this is Pennsylvania, where we're already looking at a multibillion dollar fix for a school funding system that has been ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Maybe Ward figures if we can just pay everyone to leave the public system, we won't have to fund it. I'm not sure that's anyone else's idea of a solution. 

Update-- But I just realized something important. The bill says you claim the tax credit by filling out the app0ropriate line on your tax form, but Pennsylvanian's who make under $33K do not have to file income tax with the state. So much for benefiting the poor.