Voucher Bills Moving Through KS Legislature

CONTACT SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES TO OPPOSE EXPANSION OF TAX CREDIT SCHOLARSHIPS. SB61 and HB2068 are identical bills that have passed out of committee and could be heard on the floor at any time. Contact your Senator and your Representative and urge them to vote NO on SB61 (Senate version) and HB2068 (House version). We oppose this bill because it moves further from the tax credit scholarship program’s original premise that it was to help at-risk kids escape “failing” schools. This bill expands eligible students to include those who qualify for reduced-price lunch as well as free lunch and removes the requirement that students be attending one of the 100 lowest-performing elementary schools. We oppose this expansion because (1) free lunch is the Kansas proxy for at-risk, and this bill moves beyond that, (2) students could use this program to leave higher-performing public schools to attend lower-performing private schools, (3) there is still no requirement that participating private schools take all students, retain all students, meet the special education needs of students, or prove students using the scholarship are performing better than they were before utilizing the scholarships. Participating private schools are also not required to be accredited under KESA. Schools receiving public dollars should be required to meet higher standards than those required by this bill. Our experience watching other states also shows these programs continue to be expanded despite the lack of evidence that they actually help struggling students. For more information on our opposition to this bill, read our testimony in the comments. If you don’t know who your legislator is, you can input your address here: https://openstates.org/ks/legislators/.

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/6/2021.