Families in Pennsylvania whose children attend a struggling public school could soon get a boost from the state in the form of funds to help send those children to a private school.
Senate Bill 2, which was advanced by the Senate Education Committee on a close 7-5 vote Tuesday, allows for the creation of education savings accounts by the state Department of the Treasury. If a parent or guardian chooses to make use of such an account, the per-child amount of state funding for the local public school district that the child attends would be redirected into that account.
“The portion of the funding formula that comes from the state is the only money that would be available,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John DiSanto, R-New Bloomfield. “So it would not be money from property taxes. … In my particular district, the Harrisburg School District spends about approximately $18,000 per student, $13,000 is from property taxes, $5,700 is the state number.”
DiSanto explained that in his example, for a child who switched from public school to private school while taking advantage of the ESA program, the school district would still get the $13,000 from property taxes, while the $5,700 would go into the ESA.
“In the instance of Harrisburg, they would still receive $13,000 but not have to educate the student,” he said. “The student’s parents would only get the $5,700.”
To qualify, the child must be attending a public school that is considered to be in the 15 percent of worst-performing schools in the state. This calculation drew considerable opposition from Democratic members of the Education Committee, who saw it as an attack on poor schools already struggling to meet the needs of impoverished students.
“The failing schools ... under this bill, when you look at which school districts they are, they’re all poor,” said Sen. Daylin Leach, D-King of Prussia. “One hundred percent of them. I mean, it’s very hard to get 100 percent of anything as a correlation in any area of public policy. But yet 100 percent of schools that are failing are poor schools. So we’re going to take poor schools and we’re going to drain more resources from them.”
But Sen. Anthony Williams of Philadelphia split from his fellow Democrats and endorsed the concept of helping families get their children out of school systems that aren’t meeting their needs, though he had qualms about SB2 itself and ultimately did not support it. He also questioned the argument that funding for a public school district was directly tied to quality.
“I happen to represent a few [school] districts, Philadelphia happens to be one,” he said. “If Philadelphia – and they make the argument – is underfunded, why do we have schools that test in the highest quartile in Pennsylvania? … There's more to the conversation than just money. Now, money is important. I'm not here to say it's not. It does matter. But I'm also here to say, how you spend the money has to be talked about, because it's not being spent the same way.”
To Sen. James Brewster, D-Monroeville, the effort to help children go to private schools amounted to an assault on the entire public school system.
“Charter schools, private schools, programs like this can all exist,” he said. “But there is audience, and I’m not suggesting anyone on this panel that thinks that public schools should go away. I don't know how we got to be one of the greatest states in the country, one of the largest economies in the world, by having such a poor public school system. How did that happen?”
The committee’s chairman, Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Hollidaysburg, argued that the legislation was about helping poor children get a better education that the worst schools couldn't offer, giving them hope for a better future.
“if you care about the success of students in your area, you would want that child to succeed, and you would try to help that family find the best path for that success,” he said. “I don't understand anybody arguing that we should keep kids in failing schools. I just can't get that through my head, that anybody would argue that. So this is an attempt to help some of the people, particularly poor people, that are trapped in a bad system.”
The committee’s approval of Senate Bill 2 earned praise from the nonprofit Commonwealth Foundation.
“Kids trapped in poor-performing schools deserve immediate access to better education options,” said Charles Mitchell, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation. “Education savings accounts are a long-overdue lifeline which recognizes one size does not fit all when it comes to education. Parents know best what their child needs to succeed, and this legislation empowers families with choice.”
The bill is awaiting consideration in the state Senate, which is on hiatus until June 4.