A bill to grant an income-tax credit for contributions to nonprofit groups that provide children with private-school scholarships failed to clear an Arkansas Senate committee Wednesday.
The eight-member Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee voted 3-2 for Senate Bill 740, sponsored by Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, after the state’s education commissioner, who works for Gov. Mike Beebe, and representatives of school board and administrator groups testified against the legislation.
Supporters of the legislation said it would open the door for low-income students to attend private schools that would better meet their educational needs; similar programs in other states have been successful, they said. However, foes of the bill said they worried it would undermine state support for the public schools.
Beebe opposes the measure because it’s “essentially a backdoor method to establish private-school vouchers with taxpayer money,” Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said afterward.
Five votes are required for the Senate tax committee to approve a bill. Only five committee members were on hand for Wednesday’s vote.
“Some people may have gotten some pressure not to vote for it,” English said afterward. “We’ll have to do some talking and some lobbying [to try to get five votes for the bill]. We’ll bring it back.”
Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, who joined Sen. David Johnson, D-Little Rock, in voting “no,” said he opposed the bill because several school district superintendents in his Senate district “had a lot of problems with it.”
The K-12 Scholarship Contribution Tax Credit Act would allow up to $10 million in tax credits for donors to private schools in fiscal 2014. To receive the tax breaks, the scholarships would have to go to families making up to 250 percent of the poverty level. A family of four making less than $57,625 per year would qualify. Arkansas’ median household income is $40,149, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The law caps the scholarships initially at $4,000 each; if the full $10 million were donated, it would provide scholarships for 2,500 students.
Misty Newcomb of Fayetteville, who is director of the Prism Education Center and who worked on the legislation, said English’s bill would create a way for low-income students to attend private schools by providing a 100 percent tax credit to donors contributing to nonprofit scholarship funding groups.
Some disadvantaged students fall through the cracks in the public schools and the legislation would help private schools accept low-income students to address their problems a little better, she said.
The legislation bars students in the state’s smallest school districts from receiving the Tax Credit Act scholarships. To get the tax break, the scholarships would have to go to children who live in school districts with 1,000 or more students.
While the state Department of Finance and Administration said the bill would reduce state tax revenue by $10 million in fiscal 2014, the reduction would be offset by the state not having to funnel funds to school districts for these students, Newcomb said.
Gary Ritter, a professor of education change at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said the state would see an annual financial benefit of between $2.67 million and $6.87 million.
Patrick Wolf, the 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at UA, said there are 33 private-school-choice programs serving 240,000 students across the nation funded by government or tax credits.
Private-school-choice programs boost educational achievement of participating students, he said, citing the programs in Dayton, Ohio; Florida; Milwaukee; New York City; and Washington, D.C. He also said public schools deliver a better education to their students based on the competition from the private schools.
Many private-school-choice programs serve disadvantaged students and the programs in major cities improve racial integration, Wolf said.
More than 10 other states have tuition-tax-credit programs, including Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Oklahoma, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But Ron Harder, representing the Arkansas School Boards Association, said school districts have received funds from the state with an increased amount of strings attached during the past 30 years and “every school district is very accountable.”
“What this bill does is it takes $4,000 and gives it per child to private schools with no oversight from the Department of Education, so as a legislative body you are totally abdicating what has been a 30-year progression of oversight to make sure that the students who graduate have the skills that they need,” he said. “This is a really bad policy decision.”
State Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said his goal is to make sure that each child has the best opportunity for an education in Arkansas, either through a public school, private school or home school.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/21/2013