The premise of school vouchers is for the state to give tax money to students to use in private schools. The scheme has been around for many years, and like a bad penny, it just seems to keep turning up. The current iteration is SB 233.  This bill would give a $6,000 voucher to any student who wants to leave a public school for a private school to help defray the cost of tuition. The problem is these vouchers will divert money from already underfunded public schools.

“For decades, Georgia’s public school system has been experiencing decreased per-student expenditures to weaken its capacity.”

School vouchers and similar programs that allow public funds to be directed to private and religious-based schools have long been an effort of conservatives and others who don’t like the system we have in this country to educate our children. The roots of the voucher idea go back centuries in other countries. But during the early years of this country, free public education for white people was the bedrock to building our democracy. Left out, of course, were people of color held in bondage. After emancipation, the concept of separate but equal schools developed and eventually was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) revived the idea of universal free education that a push to integrate schools began. It was fiercely resisted by some, especially in the South. Private segregation academies began to spring up, and voucher schemes became a way to help fund these segregated schools.

More broadly, working to undermine the system of a universal free education system has been a major goal of free market thinkers like economist Milton Friedman, who espoused limited government in the 1950s. Republicans have picked up this mantle in recent years as a means to cut taxes and limit resources to what they contemptuously call “government” schools.

For decades, Georgia’s public school system has been experiencing decreased per-student expenditures to weaken its capacity. Georgia has made budget cuts to public schools in 18 of the last 20 years, totaling $10 billion of underfunding, according to a 2022 report from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI). This underfunding has resulted in larger class sizes, larger caseloads for school counselors, psychologists, and other staff, and an aging school bus fleet, among other deficits. In addition, these cuts have pushed more costs to the local county school boards, whose main source of revenue is the property tax.

Entitled the “Georgia Promise Scholarship Act,” Senate Bill 233,  establishes a voucher system in the state. It would create an education savings account (ESA), another name for vouchers, that would pay for private school tuition or other educational expenses in the amount of $6,000 per year per student. If a family thinks their local public school is not serving their child’s educational needs, they could apply for a voucher that would then cover a portion of private school tuition. There are other acceptable uses for the $6,000 outlined in the bill.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this approach is that it diverts already scarce tax-payer dollars away from the public schools across the state. And it would likely be a lot of money. But supporters of this bill have presented neither an estimate of the costs nor the expected revenue losses to local school districts. An analysis by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute of an almost identical bill in the last session, HB 999, concluded that a $6,000 grant would potentially divert hundreds of millions of dollars annually. For example, if only 2.5 percent of total students (approximately 42,350 students in Georgia public schools in FY2022) applied for this grant, the state contribution diverted to private schools would be slightly over a quarter of a billion dollars annually.

Supporters of this bill and vouchers disingenuously argue that transferring students to private schools reduces public school system expenditures.  Carolyn Woods, with Public Education Matters Georgia, says, “This actually reduces a district’s costs because you take the child out of the public system, but the school still keeps their local dollars for that child. This totally ignores the fact that districts, when they lose a child, they can’t lose a teacher, they can’t lose a school bus, they can’t lose a school. Their fixed costs remain the same for that child. But they’ve just lost the $6,000.”

In addition to the persistent underfunding and the exorbitant amount of money potentially diverted from public school support by vouchers, public school advocates point out other difficulties with this voucher proposal. Lisa Morgan, a former kindergarten teacher and president of the Georgia Association of Educators, notes that the benefit of vouchers will go primarily to students in the Atlanta metro area and the larger cities across the state.  “Of our 159 counties, 101 counties have zero private schools, and 28 counties have only one. So our families that live outside of Atlanta or the other larger cities, not only cannot afford the additional expense that would be required, no school in their community can participate in the program.” In effect, this voucher program would direct money to private schools in Atlanta and other urban areas, primarily in only 20 counties.

Another serious concern is that this $6,000 voucher has no means test. Just like the HOPE scholarship, It would be available to students of high-income families who can well afford private school tuition without a state tax-funded voucher. Additionally, students who take advantage of this voucher and move to a private school lose federal protections for disabled students and those who need additional learning support. Also, private schools are not required to offer many state-mandated protections, such as criminal background checks or certification requirements for teachers.

The almost identical HB 999 linked above was introduced in last year’s General Assembly, but it hit an embarrassing roadblock when a pro-voucher national organization blanketed Republican districts with inflammatory flyers. The sponsors of this year’s bill didn’t even bother to change the name of the current bill.

Certainly, individual students and families often face inadequate opportunities in their local schools, which forces them to search for better options. “We don’t ever criticize a parent for making a decision that feels best for their kid,” says Mikayla Arciaga. Georgia Advocacy Director for the Intercultural Development Research Association. (IDRA)  “But we, in general, believe that the public education system needs to be fully invested in and have consistent funding before we start looking at options that divert funding away from that system.  Our public education system is supposed to be the one that serves all of our kids, including those kids who get rejected by a private school or get pushed out to charter schools. In a lot of ways, the shortfalls of the public education system can be tracked to the ways in which it has been systematically underfunded, especially following segregation and desegregation.”

Many people who have attended public schools, especially in rural Georgia, understand the importance of the local school system to the health and well-being of their local community. In many counties in Georgia, the school system is the major employer. And bonds that families build up from elementary through high school become part of the strength of the community. The weakening of the public school system by both underfunding and schemes to divert resources, just like the closing of a community’s hospital, tears at the fabric of that community.  The state of Georgia needs to understand the importance of strengthening and building up our public schools, not only to offer quality education for our children but also for the overall health of each community.

If you are reading this on Monday, March 6, you can pick up the phone and call your state senator to urge them to vote no on SB 233. Find their capitol office numbers here.

Krista Brewer

Krista Brewer is a native Atlantan who has a professional background in writing, reporting and editing. For several decades she has closely followed Georgia politics, focusing on topics such as healthcare, voting and immigrant rights, and budget and environmental issues. She is active on Twitter and invites readers to follow her @KristaRBrewer.