Today the Senate Education committee recommended passing SB 130, a bill that would create a voucher program to send taxpayer money to private and religious schools, on a party line vote.
At a time when our state, schools and students face serious challenges, the last thing we need to do is spend scarce taxpayer dollars on vouchers for private or religious schools that are not accountable and can pick and choose their students. Voucher programs like this one, use our tax dollars for unaccountable private schools and expenses. SB 130 also did not demand sufficient standards for accounting, education, or transparency and today’s amendments did little to fix that problem.
Instead of passing bills like SB 130, we should be focused on fixing our inequitable school funding situation not making the situation worse.
We urge the full senate to reject the committee recommendation and this legislation.