Why I oppose South Carolina’s school choice program to pay for private schools | Opinion

As a parent of a South Carolina public school student, I am deeply opposed to the private school voucher program proposed in Senate Bill 62. Since the state Supreme Court called an earlier program to spend public funds on private schools unconstitutional in September, I knew there had to be more to the story than the happy-go-lucky narrative about “school choice,” and I have found sobering evidence of how problematic vouchers have been in other states.

In Wisconsin, where the nation’s first publicly funded private voucher began in Milwaukee in 1990, the state’s voucher experiment has been detrimental to students with learning disabilities because the religious schools that mostly get the vouchers are exempt from federal laws barring discrimination based on disability unless they take federal funds.

According to the National Coalition for Public Education, an advocacy group founded in 1978, voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., have resulted in learning losses on par with or exceeding those brought on by Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed 100 of 128 New Orleans public schools, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in an unprecedented learning loss. ProPublica reports that Arizona is currently experiencing “a budget meltdown” because of an overpromising, mismanaged voucher program.

Opposition to vouchers in other states has come from progressive and conservative voters and legislators. Last year, voters in all 120 counties in Kentucky rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to use public dollars for private vouchers, and the Texas House of Representatives struck down a voucher provision in its state, driven by rural Republicans.

The negative impacts of voucher programs disproportionately harm rural counties that depend on public schools for community, employment and education. This is a problem because rural public schools depend on state funding disproportionately more than their urban counterparts. In South Carolina, for example, McCormick County School District’s current yearly per-pupil state funding is $14,166 while the Richland One School District spends only $7,447 per student. A voucher program that takes funding away from public schools will hurt rural schools first.

I’m also concerned about potential discrimination in the specific program suggested in Senate Bill 62. Many private schools are not qualified or willing to serve students with religious differences, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities. This bill is not designed to serve every student.

Senate Bill 62 would ultimately allow families making 600% of the federal poverty level to qualify for vouchers. That means a family of four making $187,000 a year could receive a scholarship frequently advertised as helping the disadvantaged. If South Carolina is like other states that have tried this policy, the wealthiest few will have their tuition subsidized by the rest of us.

Applicants to this program also do not have to come from public schools, which means it will likely be used primarily by families already enrolled in private schools. That is the case for more than two in three voucher recipients in Indiana, Florida and Arizona.

At its capacity — 15,000 applicants at $8,636 per student from state sources — this program would spend almost $130 million in public funds to support private education every year. And pro-voucher lawmakers have already shown they are willing to make this program unlimited, at a cost that would seriously damage public funding of rural schools.

Finally, these scholarship funds would come from the South Carolina Education Lottery fund, which is currently strained to meet already-promised higher education scholarships. There is no plan to make sure those college scholarships will be fulfilled with this extra fiscal responsibility.

I fear for the impact this bill will have on our public school system. There’s so much more at stake than simply giving parents school choice. As a parent myself, I hope legislators will work to enhance the democratic and inclusive nature of public education, instead of promoting programs which benefit very few students, have huge financial impacts, and which are allowed by law to discriminate.