Scholarships to Private Schools Move Forward (NJ)

May 14, 2010

A proposal to use taxpayer money to send some low-income New Jersey students to private schools advanced Thursday through a state Senate committee, pushing the idea a step closer to the desk of Gov. Chris Christie, who sees it as a centerpiece of his education plans.

After taking the unusual step of holding a hearing outside, where hundreds of supporters — many of them private school students — could cheer them on, the Senate’s economic growth committee unanimously approved the measure.

Advocates for the bill see it as a way to solve a perpl exing problem — how to educated New Jersey’s inner-city students as well as their counterparts in the suburbs. While the state’s urban schools are funded as well as the wealthiest schools, there still are big gaps in how well students do there.

"Quality education, we believe, is a civil right that should not depend on ZIP code, income or race," said Reginald Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey.

Supporters say the threat of competition could spark improvement in low-performing public schools and that the system would save taxpayer money by helping keep private schools alive. As Catholic schools have closed during the past decade because of declining enrollments and financial problems, more students have been driven to public schools, where the public picks up the bill.

Opponents include much of the state’s education establishment, such as the New Jersey Education Association and the New Jersey School Boards Association, along with civil rights groups such as the NAACP and ACLU. They see it as an effort to strip public schools of resources and to have the state subsidize religious institutions.

Marie Blistan, the secretary and treasurer for the New Jersey Education Association, which has been battling with the Christie Administration on other fronts, said for-profit enterprises that run charter schools eventually would be the beneficiaries of the scholarship program. "Haven’t we had enough taxpayer bailouts for private industry?" she asked.

Under the plan, low-income students in 205 schools deemed to be failing could get scholarships that they to use for tuition at private schools or public schools in other communities.

The catch for the schools: The scholarships would have to be accepted for full tuition.

They would be worth at least $6,000 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and at least $9,000 for high schoolers.

The scholarships would be funded with contributions from businesses — but the firms would receive a $1 state tax credit for every $1 they put into the system.

The state would give up to $24 million in tax credits the first year and add $24 million more for each year of the five-year pilot program. About 3,000 students of the nearly 1.4 million in the state’s public school system could get new scholarships each year; students who get them one year would continue getting them in future years.

When students accept a scholarship and leave a public school district, the state’s allocation to that district would be decreased. Instead of going directly to the school, that money would be placed into a grant fund. School districts labeled as chronically failing could apply for portions of that money to try new educational programs.

Andrew St. Angelo, a spokesman for the Indianapolis-based Foundation for School Choice, said that while several states have this kind of program, the version proposed in New Jersey would be among the most sweeping of its kind in the nation.

The proposal has support from Democrats and Republicans, and has been kicking around in Trenton for more than four years in various forms. But until Christie, a Republican, became governor earlier this year, it didn’t pick up much traction.

Senators predict the bill will pass in their chamber, but the path is not so certain in the Assembly. Advocates are still looking for sponsors there. The Black Ministers Council’s Jackson says he hopes to get at least one African-American member to lead the charge. But that hasn’t happened yet.