Once again, there is a bill before the General Assembly that would pay for private school tuition fees for poor kids, and provide an income tax credit to those who contribute to the program.
And once again, it faces opposition from the usual suspects.
The Senate voted to approve Senate Bill 680 by a large margin. The legislation would pay for tuition to private schools for about 250 kids in Arkansas who are considered in need. But allowing even 250 kids to leave failing schools isn't an option for certain lawmakers, some of whom are former teachers. The teachers union bond is strong.
The argument against these kinds of bills (and SB680 isn't the first one) is that allowing kids to escape from failing traditional public schools to private ones (or public charters, or the next district over, or take your pick) harms traditional public schools because state money follows the student. A friend emailed some numbers to us the other day that makes another, more powerful argument. And one we've never thought about before:
There are more than 22,000 home-schooled students in Arkansas.
There are nearly 18,000 private- school students in Arkansas.
Various Internet sites differ on the exact numbers, but we're confident that those numbers are close, given what the various dot-orgs and dot-govs say.
And according to the Census Bureau (census.gov), the state of Arkansas spends $10,139 per child, per year, to educate each one in the traditional public school system. But if you only include the state "foundation" money that goes to each school district equally per student, it may be closer to $7,000.
If our math is right, that's at least $280 million the state is already not spending on kids who choose some other form of education other than the traditional public schools. If not much, much more.
When lawmakers start complaining that allowing tax credits to fund scholarships will hurt the rest of the public school system financially, we wonder if they have considered what it would cost if these options disappear.