Our children need your help! An amended version of SB 2675 passed the Senate Education Committee today and will now go to the full Senate for a floor vote. This bill originally called for a sweeping expansion of vouchers, but instead, what passed committee today is a provision to keep the current ESA voucher program running into 2024 (it is slated to end in 2020). Remember the PEER report detailing fraud and abuse in the ESA vouchers? Why would Senate leaders want to extend this terribly flawed program even longer?! Unbelievable.
Please ask senators to:
Vote NO on Senate Bill 2675, OPPOSE any expansion OR extension of vouchers!
Capitol Switchboard: 601.359.3770. Find other contact information for legislators.
Share the same message with Lt. Governor Reeves, Capitol: 601.359.3200
Here are some of the problems SB 2675 would extend:
• allows private schools to take your tax dollars and reject any students they don’t want to teach
• keeps secret how private voucher schools use public funds
• private voucher schools pocket the public funds intended for special education services while using public schools to provide special education services to voucher students
• abuse of taxpayer funds (official findings include $11,000 to parent for “teaching” with no evidence of eligible school, $6,286 for uncertified “tutoring,” $390 to preschool for “Mother’s Day Out”)
All other voucher bills in this first round of legislative action are dead as of tonight’s committee deadline. We are very grateful to House Education Chairman Richard Bennett and our representatives for standing up to the privatizers and declining to bring up a voucher bill for a vote. Please join us in thanking them. Find contact information.
Remind our legislators that we stand by them when they stand up for public schools. Be sure to ask your senator to VOTE NO on SB 2675 and forward this email to encourage friends and family to call, too. Together, we’ve got this!
