Senate Bill 2623, an alarming voucher bill, passed the Senate Education Committee today and is headed to the Senate floor. Please ask your senator to vote NO on this bill.
The bill funnels taxpayer dollars to private and for-profit entities and specifically prohibits holding the majority of private voucher schools accountable for how they spend our tax dollars. SB 2623:
opens vouchers to all students
over 10 years, takes $1.5-billion from public schools to subsidize tuition at private, for-profit, and cyber schools
provides for a mobile app through which parents of voucher students can use state funds to pay “educational” expenses, inviting fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars
prohibits entities from requiring data from private schools that operate using our tax dollars, with one exception: allows PEER to request test scores of voucher students (parents and private schools can pick their own tests), but no other data, from private schools serving 30 or more voucher students
allows parents to roll over unused voucher funds from one year to the next
funds nearly 2,500 vouchers next year and grows by 4,000+ each year; funds 21,700 vouchers at a cost of up to $141-million in year five and continues to grow thereafter
Please ask senators to vote NO on the voucher bill, SB 2623.
Capitol Switchboard: 601.359.3770
Share the same message with:
Lt. Governor Reeves Capitol: 601.359.3200
This bill could come up for a floor vote soon, so please make those calls. Remind your senator that more than a third of the funds set aside for the current voucher program have not been used. Private schools have refused to admit many of the students who were assigned vouchers, proving that it isn’t parents who do the choosing, it is the private schools. Read more.
And…SB 2400, which calls for school board members to be elected at the same time every four years (in gubernatorial elections), also is headed to the Senate floor. Ask your senator to amend SB 2400 to provide for staggered terms of office for school board members, or vote NO on the bill.
