By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

 

HARRISBURG — While the state Senate continues to push off a final vote on a major public school voucher bill, the state House on Tuesday began moving a smaller school choice proposal of its own.

 

Rather than creating a new voucher program, as the state Senate is proposing, the House plan would expand the existing Educational Improvement Tax Credit program. Under the new proposal, students from families that earn $75,000 or less annually would become eligible for scholarships to attend private or faith-based schools, and the tax credits that provide the scholarship funds would be increased in each of the next two years. 

 

Eligibility for EITC scholarships now is restricted to families earning less than $50,000 per year.

 

The House legislation also will increase the tax credits available through the program from $75 million this year to $100 million next year and $200 million in fiscal year 2012-13. The EITC program allows businesses to receive a 75-percent tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations. Those organizations provide scholarships to low-income students who wish to attend private or faith-based schools but cannot afford to do so.

 

The proposal passed the House Education Committee by a vote of 21-4 and will be considered by the House. It likely will be redirected to the House Appropriations Committee later this week.

 

The discussions on the new House proposal are not occurring in a vacuum, with members of the education committee admitting the Senate school choice proposal continues to hang over their heads.

 

State Rep. Thomas Quigley, R-Montgomery, said the EITC was the best chance for a compromise between the state House and state Senate on the school choice issue.

 

“This bill makes our statement as it relates to school choice,” Quigley said. “People are more comfortable with something that has a track record.”

 

Since the EITC program was established in 2001, it has provided scholarships to more than 250,000 students. The average EITC scholarship is $1,100. The EITC relies on tax credits rather than tax dollars — as the voucher proposal would — to fund the scholarships, said state Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, chairman of the Education Committee.

 

State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, voted in favor of the bill Monday but said he still had his reservations about it.

 

“The changes in the income standards are going to direct the money away from who the (EITC) was originally designed to help,” Conklin said. “There will be fewer scholarships available for lower income students.”

 

State Rep. James Roebuck, D-Philadelphia, was one of four Democrats on the committee to vote against the proposal Monday. He said this was not the right time to increase funding for the EITC when public schools in Pennsylvania are facing a $1.2 billion cut in funding, largely the result of the end of the federal stimulus.

 

“It doesn’t equate. It’s not a real fair decision to be made on the part of the legislature,” Roebuck said.

 

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, opposes the Senate voucher proposal but has not taken a position on the House’s plan, according to David Broderic, a spokesperson for the PSEA.

 

The state Senate has spent the first four months of the year crafting a broader school choice bill that  would also expand the EITC program. However, the centerpiece of the Senate plan is a statewide voucher program that would redirect state tax dollars from school districts to individual students. The program would begin with the poorest students in 144 failing public schools and gradually expand during four years to include any family in the state earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

 

The Senate proposal has been assailed from the left by teacher unions who disagree with the plan to redirect state dollars from public schools to individual students. The bill also has been attacked from some Tea Party groups on the right who said the proposal does not have broad enough eligibility standards to include many middle-class families.

 

Two weeks ago, the state Senate postponed a planned final vote on the school choice bill because members had concerns with the bill. 

 

Gov. Tom Corbett  has endorsed the concept of school choice, but has not gone on the record endorsing the specific proposal made by the state Senate.

 

The Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP held a rally at the state Capitol on Tuesday to voice their opposition to the voucher bill, and the Senate postponed a final vote on the bill for at least another week.

 

If the bill makes it out of the state Senate, it appears to have a difficult road ahead in the state House.

 

Conklin said the Senate proposal would amount to “a huge tax burden on property owners” in its current form and said the House would have to make changes to the bill before he could support it.

 

Quigley said the Senate bill would have to be “tweaked” before he and many other Republicans in the House would support it.