Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree, R-Little River, leads an Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 in Columbia, S.C. (File/Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Legislators’ latest plan for funding private K-12 scholarships would allow parents making more than $185,000 to participate and give them more money for tuition.
Republicans in both chambers have made reinstating school choice scholarships a top priority for 2025. They have pledged to quickly come up with a way to resume private tuition payments that ceased Sept. 11, when the state Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional.
A proposal to be pre-filed Wednesday in the Senate would fund the scholarships from lottery profits rather than the state’s general fund for tax collections. The “trust fund” program would be newly dubbed K-12 education lottery scholarships.
Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree said Tuesday he believes the changes avoid the state constitution’s ban on public dollars directly benefiting private education, allowing the re-named program to survive the next legal challenge.
Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, said switching the pot of money is akin to “putting lipstick on a pig.”
“You can call it something different but the consequence to public schools will still be the same,” said East, whose group filed the lawsuit last fall.
The proposal will likely be the first bill senators debate on the floor in the session that starts next month. Passage is expected to be swift in a chamber with a new GOP supermajority.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Why are you in such a rush?’” Hembree, R-Little River, said Tuesday in a subcommittee meeting called to publicly outline the proposal.
The reason, he said, is a court ruling that sent hundreds of parents scrambling to find a way to keep their children in their chosen school a month after classes started. Private donations collected since will cover tuition for most students through the third quarter.
“These are students who otherwise can’t afford these opportunities,” Hembree said. “These are real people. These are real families caught in the middle of this political, Columbia problem. They’re the ones paying the price. If we didn’t get it right, we need to fix it and fix it fast.”
That proposed “fix” also eliminates most eligibility requirements for participating parents.
The law that justices partially threw out provided $6,000 scholarships for students who attended a public school last year or were entering kindergarten this year. Income eligibility in the program’s first year was limited to students who qualified for Medicaid. Under the law, that rises to 400% of the federal poverty level in the third year.
Hembree said it’s designed to provide opportunities to parents who can’t afford them.
“Rich people have choices,” he said. “People who can’t afford it, their choices are limited.
However, the bill he outlined would raise income eligibility to 600% of the poverty level starting in 2026. For a family of four, that’s $187,200 under current poverty guidelines, which are adjusted annually.
The bill would also eliminate the criteria that students previously attend a public school, allowing families already sending their children to private schools at their own expense to get state aid.
And it would annually increase the amount of the scholarship by tying it to the average per-pupil state aid sent to school districts. This year, that’s about $8,500, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.
Those changes mean the children who the program’s supposedly designed for “may find themselves shut out,” said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association.
The proposal keeps the law’s participation caps, which would rise to 15,000 in 2026.
Kelly said the program needs to at least give preference to poor students and students transferring from a public school. Otherwise, the program could primarily benefit parents already paying for private schooling, especially since admission is first-come, first-served, he said.
He also wants to see limitations on private schools’ ability to raise tuition on children in the program.
Just as it’s not in students’ best interests to lose their scholarship mid-year, “it’s not good if a family can afford to send their child this year but then they get priced out the next year by a tuition increase,” he said. “I worry about that impact if there’s no guardrail.”
He did, however, tentatively support a new provision that allows the scholarships to be used for transfers within a school district.
Under the 2023 law, parents could use the money to enroll their children in a public school in a district outside of where they live but not inside their district lines. The high court’s ruling pointed to that as evidence that public school choice is not the program’s purpose.
If the bill allows state aid to cover inter-district transportation, it could remove the biggest hindrance to parents taking advantage of existing choice opportunities for their children in public schools, said Kelly, a high school teacher in suburban Richland 2.
The state Department of Education’s budget request for next school year seeks an additional $30 million to fund the second year of the scholarship program.
The first year of participation was capped at 5,000, though actual participation was much lower.
Of more than 7,900 applicants, 2,880 K-12 students were eligible and approved. And only about 700 students were using their state aid for private tuition when the ruling stopped those payments. That’s according to the state Department of Education’s court filings and Palmetto Promise Institute, the state’s leading proponent of school choice legislation, which has publicly used that number in fundraising efforts to cover this year’s tuition.
by Seanna Adcox, SC Daily Gazette
December 10, 2024
by Seanna Adcox, SC Daily Gazette
December 10, 2024
COLUMBIA — Legislators’ latest plan for funding private K-12 scholarships would allow parents making more than $185,000 to participate and give them more money for tuition.
Republicans in both chambers have made reinstating school choice scholarships a top priority for 2025. They have pledged to quickly come up with a way to resume private tuition payments that ceased Sept. 11, when the state Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional.
A proposal to be pre-filed Wednesday in the Senate would fund the scholarships from lottery profits rather than the state’s general fund for tax collections. The “trust fund” program would be newly dubbed K-12 education lottery scholarships.
Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree said Tuesday he believes the changes avoid the state constitution’s ban on public dollars directly benefiting private education, allowing the re-named program to survive the next legal challenge.
Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, said switching the pot of money is akin to “putting lipstick on a pig.”
“You can call it something different but the consequence to public schools will still be the same,” said East, whose group filed the lawsuit last fall.
The proposal will likely be the first bill senators debate on the floor in the session that starts next month. Passage is expected to be swift in a chamber with a new GOP supermajority.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Why are you in such a rush?’” Hembree, R-Little River, said Tuesday in a subcommittee meeting called to publicly outline the proposal.
The reason, he said, is a court ruling that sent hundreds of parents scrambling to find a way to keep their children in their chosen school a month after classes started. Private donations collected since will cover tuition for most students through the third quarter.
“These are students who otherwise can’t afford these opportunities,” Hembree said. “These are real people. These are real families caught in the middle of this political, Columbia problem. They’re the ones paying the price. If we didn’t get it right, we need to fix it and fix it fast.”
That proposed “fix” also eliminates most eligibility requirements for participating parents.
The law that justices partially threw out provided $6,000 scholarships for students who attended a public school last year or were entering kindergarten this year. Income eligibility in the program’s first year was limited to students who qualified for Medicaid. Under the law, that rises to 400% of the federal poverty level in the third year.
Hembree said it’s designed to provide opportunities to parents who can’t afford them.
“Rich people have choices,” he said. “People who can’t afford it, their choices are limited.
However, the bill he outlined would raise income eligibility to 600% of the poverty level starting in 2026. For a family of four, that’s $187,200 under current poverty guidelines, which are adjusted annually.
The bill would also eliminate the criteria that students previously attend a public school, allowing families already sending their children to private schools at their own expense to get state aid.
And it would annually increase the amount of the scholarship by tying it to the average per-pupil state aid sent to school districts. This year, that’s about $8,500, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.
Those changes mean the children who the program’s supposedly designed for “may find themselves shut out,” said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association.
The proposal keeps the law’s participation caps, which would rise to 15,000 in 2026.
Kelly said the program needs to at least give preference to poor students and students transferring from a public school. Otherwise, the program could primarily benefit parents already paying for private schooling, especially since admission is first-come, first-served, he said.
He also wants to see limitations on private schools’ ability to raise tuition on children in the program.
Just as it’s not in students’ best interests to lose their scholarship mid-year, “it’s not good if a family can afford to send their child this year but then they get priced out the next year by a tuition increase,” he said. “I worry about that impact if there’s no guardrail.”
He did, however, tentatively support a new provision that allows the scholarships to be used for transfers within a school district.
Under the 2023 law, parents could use the money to enroll their children in a public school in a district outside of where they live but not inside their district lines. The high court’s ruling pointed to that as evidence that public school choice is not the program’s purpose.
If the bill allows state aid to cover inter-district transportation, it could remove the biggest hindrance to parents taking advantage of existing choice opportunities for their children in public schools, said Kelly, a high school teacher in suburban Richland 2.
The state Department of Education’s budget request for next school year seeks an additional $30 million to fund the second year of the scholarship program.
The first year of participation was capped at 5,000, though actual participation was much lower.
Of more than 7,900 applicants, 2,880 K-12 students were eligible and approved. And only about 700 students were using their state aid for private tuition when the ruling stopped those payments. That’s according to the state Department of Education’s court filings and Palmetto Promise Institute, the state’s leading proponent of school choice legislation, which has publicly used that number in fundraising efforts to cover this year’s tuition.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
Seanna Adcox is a South Carolina native with three decades of reporting experience. She joined States Newsroom in September 2023 after covering the S.C. Legislature and state politics for 18 years. Her previous employers include The Post and Courier and The Associated Press.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
DEMOCRACY TOOLKIT
© SC Daily Gazette, 2024
v1.64.3
The South Carolina Daily Gazette is a nonprofit news site providing nonpartisan reporting and thoughtful commentary. We strive to shine a light on state government and how political decisions affect people across the Palmetto State. We do that with coverage that’s free to both readers and other news outlets.
We’re part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. (See full republishing guidelines.)
© SC Daily Gazette, 2024
