Federation Focus/The Southern Region-Several state associations grapple with vouchers and tax credits
In Louisiana, school board leaders are considering a legal challenge against a recently enacted voucher program for New Orleans. Florida school board members are engaged in a major battle to keep several far-reaching constitutional amendments off the ballot in November. And Georgia leaders are dealing with a tax credit program that supports vouchers just months after successfully killing a bill in the legislature.
How are school districts—and the state school boards associations that serve them—coping with these challenges? With the launch of “Federation Focus,” School Board News is looking at how education issues are affecting the various regions of the country that make up the NSBA Federation.
This first report takes a look at the resurgence of school vouchers and related proposals for diverting federal funding to private schools in several states in the Southern Region.
Louisiana
Gov. Bobby Jindal, a strong voucher supporter, signed legislation in July creating a $10 million voucher program for New Orleans students.
Parents of kindergarten through third-grade students could receive vouchers worth up to $6,300 for private school tuition if their public school is identified as low performing under the state assessment system. Larger vouchers would be available to students with disabilities.
The program is limited to families with incomes that do not exceed 250 percent of the federal poverty line. The cost would rise as the program gradually expands to higher grades in subsequent years.
“We are adamantly opposed to vouchers. We fought this tooth and nail and did not win that battle,” says Louisiana School Boards Association Executive Director Nolton Senegal Jr.
LSBA joined the state’s two teacher unions and state associations representing superintendents and administrations in opposing the voucher bill.
Catholic schools make up a large share—17 percent—of the state’s student population, and the parochial school community, hurt by declining enrollment following Hurricane Katrina, lobbied heavily for the measure.
In addition, Senegal notes, Jindal gained legislative support for the measure by promising not to veto a bill to more than double lawmakers’ salaries. [He subsequently vetoed the measure anyway.]
Clarence H. “Sonny” Savoie, a member of the St. Charles Parish, La., school board, expressed disappointment with the state action and calls a lawsuit a “very definite possibility,” if the state superintendents association would join. He says his district will join a suit if LSBA decides to pursue a legal challenge.
Before filing a suit on constitutional grounds, “we need to make sure a case would be winnable,” Senegal says. Unlike the vast majority of state constitutions, Louisiana’s does not restrict state funding to public schools.
On a related measure, LSBA got the legislature to water down a tax credit measure that gives parents a $500 state income tax credit for school-related expenses such as band uniforms and extracurricular activity fees.
The original bill would have included private school parents, but the bill that was passed restricts the credit to public school students.
Florida
The Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) is working on legal challenges to block three constitutional amendments from appearing on the November ballot:
• Amendment 5 would bar the use of state property tax revenues to fund public schools.
• Amendment 7 would repeal the section of the constitution—commonly referred to as the Blaine amendment or “no aid” provision—that prohibits the use of public funds for religious institutions. If passed, this measure could revive the state’s largest school voucher program, which was declared unconstitutional in 2006.
• Amendment 9 would remove another constitutional barrier to vouchers by holding that the state’s obligation to educate children does not have to be carried out exclusively through public schools. It also would require at least 65 percent of a district’s school funding to be spent on classroom instruction, rather than administration.
Wayne Blanton, FSBA’s executive director, called the ballot measures “blue smoke and mirrors to mislead the people of Florida to vote for an ill-conceived voucher amendment.” He said Amendment 9, which hides the voucher issue behind a measure to limit classroom expenses, is particularly misleading.
FSBA and other education organizations have hired Ron Meyer, the attorney who won the previous voucher case, to file a motion for summary judgment to the state’s Supreme Court to block Amendments 7 and 9 from appearing on the ballot.
The groups argue that the titles and summaries of the ballot measures are unclear, confusing, and do not adequately explain the implications to voters, says Ruth Melton, FSBA’s director of legislative relations.
FSBA also is working with a broader coalition—including the education community and representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, firefighters, hospitals, and many others—to urge the Supreme Court to keep Amendment 5 off the ballot.
Currently, half of school districts’ budgets come from state property tax revenues. To offset the loss of these funds, the amendment calls for the state to increase the sales tax by 1 cent, but Melton said that would not come close to making up the difference. The sales tax increase would yield $3.2 to $3.3 billion—down from about $4 billion annually during more prosperous times—while property tax revenue provided about $9.4 billion this year for K-12 schools.
While the legislature has discussed eliminating some sales tax exemptions to generate more money for education, Melton says the education budget will still face a $2.7 billion shortfall.
Georgia
Gov. Sonny Perdue has signed a law creating a program giving tax credits to people who contribute to organizations that assist lower-income families with private school tuition. It is based on a similar program in Florida.
The legislation, signed in May, authorizes up to $50 million a year for the program, which takes effect retroactively to Jan. 1. Individuals can contribute up to $1,000 a year and take a credit against their state income tax for that amount. Married couples can claim a $2,500 credit. Corporations can claim up to 75 percent of their income tax liability.
The Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) opposes tax credits and vouchers but did not focus on this issue because “we didn’t want to distract [the legislature] from a larger fight over repealing the taxing authority of local boards,” said Policy Director Angela Palm. The repeal was defeated.
GSBA succeeded in beating down a voucher bill for the second year in a row.
That legislation, which was passed by the Senate but never made it to the House floor, would have provided vouchers to students who were enrolled in public schools in their sixth year of improvement. Students in districts that lost accreditation, or in schools with a graduation rate of less than 50 percent, also would have been eligible. Palm expects a similar bill to resurface next year.
In 2007, Georgia enacted a voucher program for students with disabilities, funded at $5.6 million, that is similar to Florida’s McKay scholarship program.
Almost 900 Georgia students received vouchers in 2007, ranging from about $2,500 to $15,300, depending on the disability. To qualify, students must have been enrolled in public schools for at least two years and must have an individualized education plan (IEP).
South Carolina
Voucher proponents failed to make headway in South Carolina, as a major voucher bill failed to get a hearing during the just-ended legislative session, reports Scott Price, general counsel for the South Carolina School Boards Association.
The reason voucher supporters put the issue on the back burner, Price said, is because all House and Senate seats are up for election in November, and pro-voucher forces are concentrating their resources on the elections.
Price says the biggest threat this year was a proposed voucher program for students with disabilities, similar to those enacted in Florida and Georgia, but it was killed in the House Ways and Means Committee.
North Carolina
For the third year in a row, the North Carolina legislature considered—but failed to pass—a bill authorizing tax credits for parents who want to transfer children with disabilities from public to private schools.
According to Leanne Winner, director of governmental relations for the North Carolina School Boards Association, the measure would have allowed parents to claim a $3,000 tax credit if their child has an IEP, needs services outside the classroom at least once a day, and has been in a public school for at least a year.
The House Education Committee held a hearing on the bill but did not take a vote on it, and the Senate Finance Committee canceled a hearing that had been on the calendar.
Texas
Public school advocates in Texas have defeated voucher proposals repeatedly over the years—the last time in 2006—but often by close votes.
Now, some public education advocates are calling the Texas Education Agency’s new $4 million-a-year Dropout Recovery Pilot a “backdoor voucher program.” It allows private schools, public school districts, private and public organizations, universities, and charter schools to apply for grants to educate dropouts.
The measure, part of a $53.7 million dropout prevention initiative passed by the legislature in 2007, uses state grants, not funds from the state’s per-pupil school funding system.
While the program “closely resembles a voucher program, we are not defining it as a voucher program,” said Julie Shields, assistant director of government relations at the Texas Association of School Boards. But she said there is concern that any effort to use public money for private schools could set a precedent.
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