PA House Dems Voted to Rip Scholarships Away from Kids

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania House Democrats on the Education Committee quietly did something extraordinary — and not in a good way.

The first bill, House Bill (HB) 2632, would gut the state’s most successful educational choice programs, strip scholarships from low-income students, and slam the door on tens of thousands more who are desperately waiting to get in.

Another bill, HB 2634, would cut funding to all charter schools, with an especially harmful reduction in support for special-needs students.

The committee passed these bills along strict party lines, with House Democrats ramming the legislation through their slim majority.

The proposed cuts to tax-credit scholarships are the most egregious attack on educational choice. HB 2632 would slash $102 million from funding for K–12 scholarship organizations. These funds are made possible by private donations to the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. Based on current usage, this would result in 30,000 current scholarship recipients losing their awards.

This has been in the works for a while. Just a few months ago, a member of the House Education Committee publicly admitted that she wanted these scholarship to “go away … and go away for good.”

This isn’t reform; this is a gut punch to the families who have come to rely on these resources.

These programs are lifelines for these kids. Last year, organizations awarded more than 101,000 K-12 scholarships to Pennsylvania kids in need of educational alternatives. Since their creation, these programs have served more than one million Pennsylvania students.

Moreover, scholarship recipients predominantly come from low- and middle-income families. These are hardworking families without the financial means to move to a better school district or write a tuition check. Tax-credit scholarships give these families a fighting chance.

Meanwhile, HB 2634 directly cuts funding to all charter schools. Cyber charters have already endured two consecutive years of cuts, and now their brick-and-mortar counterparts face the same wrath. In recent years, these schools—which disproportionately serve more special-needs kids than traditional public schools—have become an increasingly popular alternative, now serving about 169,000 students statewide.

The timing of this legislation couldn’t be worse: The demand for educational choice has never been higher. Last year, Pennsylvania turned away nearly 70,000 EITC and OSTC applicants because of enrollment caps.

The demand for charter schools is also profound. Every year, thousands of Pennsylvania kids apply for seats and enter lotteries to earn admission. Sadly, there are always more applicants than available seats.

Pennsylvania families are in dire need of more educational options. Yet House Democrats are leading the charge to add to these waiting lists.

Our commonwealth helped pioneer the school choice movement. Twenty-five years ago, the commonwealth enacted one of the first tax-credit scholarship programs in the nation. Since then, Pennsylvania students have greatly benefited from increased efforts to provide educational opportunities beyond the one-size-fits-all model that they had grown accustomed to.

Let’s not mince words here, either: House Democrats want to deny educational opportunities to Pennsylvania students and parents. Their actions would undo more than two decades of progress. That’s nothing short of unconscionable.

The House must reject this package when it reaches the floor. Every lawmaker who votes to advance it should be prepared to explain to all these kids — the 30,000 students about to lose their scholarships, the 70,000 already turned away, and the tens of thousands on charter waiting lists—why they made such a heinous decision.

Gutting educational choice is not a policy solution. It is a moral failure — and Pennsylvania kids deserve better.

Andrew Lewis is President and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.