Board Resolution Opposes Tax Credit for Scholarship Bill

The Board of Education approved a resolution opposing proposed bills that would allow tax credits for corporations providing scholarships to students in failing schools, though only six members voted in favor of the resolution.

Board members Judy Haas, Thuy Ahn Le, Marc Rosenberg, Barbara Sargent, Wolfgang Schneider and Board President Steven Paget voted in favor of the resolution against bills S-1872 and A-2810 during the Monday Board of Education meeting.  Thomas Kinst and Greg Gillette voted against the resolution, while Neil Hudes abstained from the vote after stating he was not clear on where the money would end up.

Sargent and Scheider did not offer comments explaining their votes at the meeting.  Haas did not offer additional comments on the bill at the Monday meeting, but had commented on it during .

The bills would create a five-year, $1 billion pilot program where corporations can contribute to scholarship organizations that would take students from failing school districts and place them in private, religious or charter schools.  The students would need to apply for the school slots and be accepted by the school in order to attend.  If there are more applications than available slots, a lottery for the open slots would be held, according to the bill provisions.

Under the bill conditions, the tax credit would be equal to 100 percent of the contribution made to a qualified scholarship organization.  Total tax credits of all participating corporations is capped at $24 million for the first year of the program, $48 million for the second program year and $72 million for the third state fiscal year, $96 million the fourth state fiscal year, and $120 million the fifth state fiscal year.

Students from the districts the students would normally attend would see their state aid reduced in the amount of per-pupil cost specified in the 2008 School Reform Act.  That money would then be used to fund the tax credit for the corporation, with any leftover money going to the Educational Innovation Fund, a five-year pilot program that establishes grants for failing schools.  The State Commissioner of Education would award the grants, with the aim of bolstering student performance at failing schools.

Gillette cited the potential for the bill to help students in failing schools as his reason for voting against the resolution.

“I don’t feel I’m on this board to protect this institution, necessarily, in the way it exists today,” Gillette said.  “I understand the part about the hundreds of millions of are already going to districts where it doesn’t do any good at all, where achievement is low and they’re spending two or sometimes three times as much as what we are spending in Hillsborough.  If these bills are an opportunity to make some of our tax money go to those districts and actually help those kids, rather than being wasted, then I’m all for it.”

Gillette also state that there were several other pieces of proposed laws that he would prefer the board take an stance on instead.

For Kinst, the program’s potential merits and the lack of direct impact on Hillsborough Schools influenced his vote.

“I think the merits of the program and based on the support it has, bipartisan and also public/private, it’s worth supporting,” Kinst said.  “I don’t feel it is appropriate for us to be writing a resolution on a bill that’s not law yet and doesn’t impact our district directly.”

Other board members, like Marc Rosenberg found believes the bills divert tax money from public schools without fixing the existing problems in public schools.  In addition, the bill raised ethical, fiscal and other concerns because it proposed using public money for private institutions, he said.

“I don’t believe we should be giving a penny to private schools, religious schools or any other schools,” Rosenberg said.  “That money should go to the public schools. ... Let’s think about the outcome of this.  Those who win the lottery will get to go to private schools and those who don’t will be left in the same rotten schools that were there before.  It isn’t fair.  It isn’t appropriate.”

“It does nothing to fix the broken schools,” he said later in the meeting.  “There’s nothing in here that says that a school can be de-certified, that the staff can be changed. ... You’re going to have some people (who win the private school lotteries) and they are going to be the luckiest people in the state.  The rest are going to become wards of the state and we are going to pay more for it.”

Board member Thuy Ahn Le echoed some of Rosenberg’s statements, noting that the bill does not address the future of the failing schools or improve the school’s performance.

“Even with this diverted money, you haven’t solved the crux of the problem,” Le said.  “The reason our board is interested is that we are supporting public schools in New Jersey and have a responsibility not to divert money from the public schools.”

For Board President Steven Paget, supporting the resolution was a matter of the economy.  The pilot program would be something he would consider if finances were better, he said.

“I’m not actually opposed to setting up a pilot program to see if it would improve the education in the state,” he said.  “What I question is, last year, the coffers were empty.  They pulled back on our surplus.  There’s barely enough to go around and there’s limited pie to hand out.  And you are going to take a billion dollars over five years and give to essentially the districts that are already getting 60 percent of the funding?”

“I don’t think it’s responsible to look at this program at this time,” he added.  “We’re hurting out here.  I think with our [budget] hearing today, it was obvious that we are hurting in Hillsborough.”