Senate narrowly passes school choice bill -Daily Local News 10/27/2011

Senate narrowly passes school choice bill

Thursday, October 27, 2011

By Eric Boehm
PA Independent

HARRISBURG — A bill creating and expanding school choice options for Pennsylvania students passed the state Senate with a vote of 27-22 on Wednesday afternoon.

The bill would:
• Create a public school voucher program for students from low-income families;
• Expand an educational scholarship program used by some students to attend nonpublic schools;
• Institute financial and academic standards for the state’s system of public charter schools.

The final vote capped 10 months of work on the bill in the state Senate. The proposal now moves to the state House for consideration.

The voucher plan is the key point in the legislation and Gov. Tom Corbett’s top priority for the fall session. It is targeted for students in the state’s 144 failing public schools, as defined by the state Department of Education.

According to a fiscal analysis by the state Senate, the voucher program will cost about $16 million in the first year based on an estimated 3 percent of eligible students using the full voucher. That cost will increase to $96 million by the fourth year when an estimated 9 percent of eligible students are expected to use the full voucher.

State-level funding for school districts is expected to redirect $15 million from the school districts in the first year of the voucher program, and then $34 million in the fourth year, which is as far as the Senate analysis projection went.

Pennsylvania spent $26 billion in federal, state and local tax dollars on education last year.

State Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Berks, said voucher program would hurt poor districts.

“This bill is not about school choice. In fact, our public schools will only suffer under this legislation,” Schwank said.

Teacher unions also opposed the bill, because the voucher would direct a portion of state-level public school funding to the voucher program.

Michael Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, said the bill was “definitely taking public education in the wrong direction.”

Pennsylvania public schools took a $900-million cut in this year’s state budget, due to declining state revenue and Republicans’ desire to rein in spending.

“This is about students and nobody else,” said state Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, a co-sponsor of the bill and one of three Democrats to vote for it. “We’re not taking money away from the schools. The reason parents want to take their children out of a school is because that school doesn’t work.”

In the failing schools, students from families earning less than $29,000 annually will be eligible for the full vouchers and families making less than $41,000 annually will be eligible for a partial voucher.

In the 17 districts with the 144 failing schools, the voucher’s value will range from $5,700 to $13,000 depending on the district. The average voucher would be about $7,700.

Of an estimated 70,000 eligible students, about 2,200 will use the vouchers in the first year, according to Senate estimates.

In the second year, when eligibility expands to students who attend nonpublic schools but are in the geographic area of the 144 failing schools, an estimated 3,600 public school students and 7,000 nonpublic school students will use the vouchers.

The bill also expands the 10-year-old Educational Improvement Tax Credit program that provides scholarships to students from low-income families and is funded by corporate contributions. The EITC will grow from $75 million this year to $100 million in next year’s budget and $125 million in the following year. The EITC would continue to expand by 5 percent annually thereafter.

State Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said the EITC expansion will double the 40,000 student who participate in the scholarship program to 80,000.

The bill also contains reforms to the state’s charter schools to require more financial transparency, including annual audits and stiffer academic standards, such as requiring more standardized testing.

Democrats and Republicans praised the expansion of the EITC to allow more students to benefit from scholarships, and the charter school accountability measures, which members said were necessary for better oversight of the growing system of charter schools.

The final vote on the bill was mostly along party lines, with three Democrats joining with 24 Republicans to approve the measure. Republicans hold a 30-20 majority in the state Senate.

URL: http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/10/28/news/doc4ea9d37938f6c413806219.prt
© 2011 dailylocal.com, a Journal Register Property