Jonathan Butcher
For David Warner, choosing a school for his son was a “very personal” decision, he said. The ability to select the place where he could learn near their home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, made him and his family feel valued, a stark contrast, David said, to his experience with assigned public schools.
But [yesterday], a state supreme court ruling in a lawsuit supported by teachers unions will cancel the scholarships for some 3,000 children from low and moderate-income families. “It feels like the light has gone out,” David told me, “and we fear being left in the dark again.”
In 2023, South Carolina lawmakers enacted the Education Scholarship Trust Fund Program, which offered children from homes with incomes at 200 percent or less of the federal poverty line (approximately $60,000 for a family of four) the opportunity to use an education savings account. Participating families were awarded accounts worth $6,000 for use on education products and services such as personal tutoring, textbooks, private school tuition, and more. Some 19 states around the U.S. had similar account-style options for families.
Now the number is 18. The state chapter of the National Education Association (NEA), a teacher union, filed a lawsuit against the accounts last October. The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled the program unconstitutional, saying the accounts are a “direct” benefit to private schools and violate the state constitution, even though the state awards the accounts to parents, not schools.
The ruling is devastating for families like the Warners because their child’s account may end immediately. “In just a few weeks of being in this program, we saw a completely different approach to education. We had more communication from teachers and staff, greater family interaction, and they valued our input in ways the public school never did,” David said.
He explains that the private school aligned with his family’s values and was transparent about what was being taught in the classroom. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/lawmakers-should-consider-oklahoma-funding-model-after-south-carolina-high