‘Put Parents in Charge Act’: A cruel hoax on the public, minorities and low-income families
By Bill Settlemyer
Executive Publisher
Like a bad penny, the “Put Parents in Charge Act” has resurfaced in the current state legislative session after getting nowhere last year. This time, the effort to pass the bill is backed by a slick and aggressive marketing campaign led by South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
As a newspaper publisher, I’ve been treated to a steady stream of e-mail press releases from this group hawking PPIC. More recently, I’ve begun receiving postcards that deliver a steady stream of attacks on public education.
Case in point: One postcard says, “When the average starting salary for South Carolina’s public school teachers is $29,590, but local administrators pay themselves up to $180,000 to $200,000 per year, there is a problem? What are YOU doing to solve the problem?”
A problem? Not really, except that it would be better if the average starting salary for public school teachers were higher. But here’s a bit of basic education for the “responsible government” crowd. School administrators don’t “pay themselves” anything—they get paid what their elected local school board approves as their compensation.
In Charleston County, the school district is a quarter-billion dollar operation with thousands of employees. That’s a lot of responsibility, and you can bet that the CEO of any corporation that large gets paid as well or better. So no, fellas, that’s not a problem, it’s just common sense.
As a citizen and as a successful graduate of public education, I really find the current campaign to be insulting, both to my intelligence and to the many thousands of dedicated public school employees around the state and the tens of thousands of volunteers and civic leaders, many from the business community, who are working heroically to improve our public schools and create more opportunity for all of South Carolina’s children.
Vouching for vouchers
Just to show I have an open mind, I’m going to take a stand in favor of “school choice” funded by a voucher program. The best voucher program in the country is most likely found in Milwaukee. It’s been around for years and appears to be having a positive effect.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford made a special trip to Milwaukee late last year to see the results for himself. Noting that Democrats there were first to propose vouchers, and that school board members were now behind the program, the governor wondered “…why people would fight against an idea that is progressive in nature, that gives to parents the same choice that a lot of wealthy parents already have…”
Why? Because the Milwaukee program and the Put Parents in Charge Act are as different as night and day. In Milwaukee, tax dollars are tightly focused on helping the children of low-income parents.
Unlike PPIC, Milwaukee’s voucher program is not a tax giveaway for middle-or upper-income parents. Depending on the number of children in a household, the family’s adjusted gross income can’t exceed a range from around $16,000 at the low end to $33,000 at the high end. Contrast that with the $75,000 “low end” maximum income level under PPIC and you begin to get the picture.
A cruel hoax
PPIC is a cruel hoax on the public and on South Carolina’s minority and low-income families. The lion’s share of the tax credits (probably almost all of the tax credits) would go to upper- and middle-income families who put their kids in private school.
The biggest whopper I came across in the postcard campaign was this one: “Wealthy families can already afford school choice. The tuition tax credit plan will give middle class and low-income families the same choice.”
Not true. PPIC spins out a fantasy world in which special nonprofits authorized under the law would magically raise millions of dollars to pay private school tuition for low-income kids. As I observed in this column last year, under PPIC, poor kids needing tuition support would have to depend on “the kindness of strangers,” while the state’s scarce tax dollars would be used to fund a $200 million dollar tax giveaway for middle- and upper-income taxpayers.
Which brings me to another postcard that says, “With school choice, students with family incomes under $30,000 will be eligible to receive fully paid tuition to attend private schools funded by voluntary tax credits.” This one’s true, literally, but is obviously designed to lull the reader into believing that the PPIC is focused on meeting the needs of lower income kids and their families.
As explained above, it does no such thing. Even the portion of the law setting up nonprofits (“SGOs”) to accept voluntary tax contributions doesn’t require the nonprofits to focus their scholarships on poor kids. The SGOs could just as easily choose to give scholarships to middle and upper income kids only and exclude poor kids altogether. And on top of that, there’s no requirement that private schools must accept low-income kids, nor does the bill hold private schools accountable for their performance.
Do the right thing
Gov. Sanford has a reputation as a straight arrow—in the context of school choice, he would better serve that reputation by giving the public an open and honest description of the stark contrast between Milwaukee’s successful voucher program and the pork-barrel Put Parents in Charge Act.
We all know that the biggest challenges facing public education in South Carolina are found in schools serving low-income families, proportionately more of whom are minorities. If our famously penurious governor wants to “do the right thing” by promoting school choice, he should drop his support of PPIC and support a pilot voucher program similar to Milwaukee’s that focuses scarce tax dollars where they will do the most good.
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