Pennsylvania State Representative Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) on Tuesday announced he would reintroduce legislation to guarantee school choice to students in the state’s most poorly performing school districts.
Under Owlett’s proposed law, families of such students could also use the new “lifeline scholarships” to pay for textbooks, special-needs services, and other qualifying expenses.
“We know a high-quality education is the foundation for the American Dream,” Owlett wrote in a memorandum to colleagues urging them to support his bill. “Yet, thousands of Pennsylvania students are denied that opportunity simply because their ZIP code confines them to some of the lowest-achieving district schools in the state. These children wake up every day to the hard truth that their school doesn’t meet their needs.”
Prospects for the bill’s enactment appear dim given that Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro was elected to serve as governor for the next four years and his party is all but certain to control the state House of Representatives soon. (While the death of one recently elected Democrat and the resignations of two others give the Republicans a two-vote majority for now, the Democrats are heavily favored to win the special elections for those three Pittsburgh-based members’ districts.)
Most Democratic representatives are already on record as opposing the lifeline-scholarship bill. When it came up for a vote in April, Amen Brown of Philadelphia was alone among Democrats in supporting it. Moreover, numerous Republican representatives, many of them in the southeast, failed to support the measure as well.
Owlett explained in his memo that he nonetheless views this issue as urgent.
“There’s no question students in low-performing schools deserve better options now,” Owlett insisted.
Pennsylvania does afford some parents cost relief if they want to choose a school for their child other than their district institution. But the waiting list to attend one of the commonwealth’s 179 public charter schools contains about 40,000 students, according to the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.
The Keystone State also provides private-school choice in the form of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, a program facilitating donations from businesses to scholarship entities and related organizations. But that program has not come close to allowing all interested families to access private education.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Scholarship Program” by Eliott Reyna.
