Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, Jan. 25, 2011
In recent weeks, State Senator Anthony Williams and State Senator Jeffry Piccola have introduced legislation that will authorize the distribution of school vouchers in the state of Pennsylvania. Under the provisions outlined in their bill, “scholarships” will be made available over the course of three years to all children who reside in low-income households within the state.
These state-subsidized vouchers can be used to pay for both public-to-public and public-to-private school choice options. In the first year of this program any student who attends a school identified as being one of the 144 persistently lowest-achieving schools in the state will be eligible to receive a school choice voucher. In the second year of implementation, all low-income students living within the attendance boundary of a persistently lowest achieving school will be included in this program. In the third year, all low-income children in the state, regardless of school attendance will qualify to receive a voucher.
The amount of these “scholarships” will be equal to 100% of the state’s per-pupil subsidy to the child’s resident school district. More than half of these schools are located in the Philadelphia School District and include all but one of the district’s neighborhood high schools.
The potential impact of this law on the finances of the School District of Philadelphia could be enormous. The per-pupil voucher subsidy would more than cover the tuition (currently $5,350) to an archdiocesan high school. Conceivably, this could result in significant diversion of school district funds to pay the tuition of every low-income student in the city who is enrolled in a catholic high school.
It is also likely that many new private schools will be opened in order to capitalize on this new source of school funding. These schools would receive 100% of the state’s per- pupil subsidy to the school district. This sum of money would be greater than the per pupil allocation currently received by charter schools in Philadelphia.
Under the provisions of this law, any private school that receives funding through this voucher program will not be subject to the same level of academic or fiscal accountability required of public and charter schools.
These are just a few aspects of this proposed legislation that require closer scrutiny. However, it appears that some of our state’s leading proponents of school choice options do not favor a robust examination of this proposed law.
This is particularly evident of the bills’ sponsors, State Senator Jeffrey Piccola and State Senator Anthony Williams, who have been quick to demonize anyone who opposes their views concerning school choice. For example, when the Pennsylvania School Boards Association expressed a variety of concerns related to several features of the bill, Senator Piccola issued the following press release:
Among their “indefensible” concerns were:
- Senate Bill 1 does not state any accountability provisions for the schools that receive state funds as a result of this voucher program.
- The parents of children who are deemed eligible to receive vouchers are not guaranteed that any school will accept their children.
- Children who are accepted into schools that are a distance from their home will not be provided transportation.
- No consideration has been given to the potential negative consequences for children who remain in public schools where funding has been significantly reduced in order to fund this voucher program.
- The question of constitutionality regarding use of public tax dollars to fund religious schools has not been addressed.
Rather than giving serious consideration to these seemingly legitimate points of concern, Senator Piccola has described them as being part of a “smear campaign” being conducted by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association against Senator Williams’ and his efforts to assist the needy children of the state of Pennsylvania.
Senator Williams has been even more adamant in his description of those who would dare to oppose this bill: “Standing in the way of school choice for needy kids in failing urban schools is like Gov. George Wallace standing in the doorway of a classroom to continue the segregation of the ‘60s,”
Apparently if you disagree with these two senators’ plan to create a voucher program in the state of Pennsylvania, you are either an East German communist or a 1960’s southern segregationist.
As this bill moves forward through our state legislature, it seems certain that we are going to witness a less-than-civil public discourse.