A school voucher bill with the backing of powerful Republican leaders passed the House 91-82 Thursday and could be headed to the Senate for a final vote.
The main part of the bill would allow parents of children in the bottom quartile of public schools to accept $6,500 to pull them out and send them to private school or teach them at home.
As she presented the bill, Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones said state funds are already used for private schools through programs like pre-K and dual enrollment for private colleges.
“Even though we made the choice to send our children to public school, as a mother, and now as a grandmother, I’ve never wanted fewer opportunities for my children,” she said. “And I was glad that there were a limited number of charter schools and a targeted school voucher program are two that the state currently had to provide options. Even though we did not exercise them. I have rarely encountered regular citizens who wanted fewer options.”
Jones said the bill will give parents another option if their local public school doesn’t suit their children. Voucher skeptics say because public schools are funded per child, taking kids out would leave struggling schools with less money to improve.
Last year, those skeptics included 16 House Republicans, who joined nearly all Democrats to scuttle a voucher bill.
Jones and other Republican leaders sought to make voting for this year’s effort more enticing by adding a raft of broadly popular education measures, including codifying teacher pay raises and allowing SPLOST money to be used for building or renovating pre-K facilities. This year’s bill adds some testing requirements — private schools would test voucher students in math and language arts and submit their scores to the state. The program’s cost would be capped at 1% of the state’s Quality Basic Education formula, or about $140 million, which would accommodate about 21,500 students.
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