Mumin confirmed as Pa. ed secretary despite critics on both sides

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s nominee to lead the state education department was confirmed by the Pennsylvania Senate on Monday despite criticism from both the right and the left, with the latter highlighting what is said to be an ongoing budget negotiation that includes school vouchers.

Kahlid Mumin was confirmed as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education on a 49to-3 vote, with those in objection all being Republicans.

During Mumin’s confirmation hearing before a Senate committee earlier Monday, however, the most strident criticisms came from Democrats, who — despite ultimately voting in support of Mumin — voiced concern about

Shapiro’s apparent willingness to include a school voucher system in the 2023-24 state budget.

“Do I vote against an otherwise exemplary nominee — and I mean that, exemplary nominee — for education secretary because he is promoting the governor’s agenda of diverting much-needed public tax dollars to unaccountable private schools?” mused Sen. Lindsay Williams, D-Allegheny, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, during the committee’s Monday morning hearing to vet Mumin.

“How far do you take a proxy battle?” asked Sen. Tim Kearney, D-Delaware, following Monday’s committee session. “(Mumin’s) qualifications are excellent in so many ways that would make a great Secretary of Education, and we’re fighting over the governor’s decision to seriously consider a voucher program.”

Shapiro, a Democrat, has not directly commented on what he might be considering in negotiations with Republicans, who hold a majority in the state Senate but not the House.

But Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, said Monday that negotiations with Shapiro over including a voucher program in the budget are “very serious.”

“We’re committed to getting it done,” Ward told PennLive following session on Monday.

‘Lifeline scholarships’

Last week, several education advocacy groups — as well as the state teachers’ union — began circulating letters and statements warning that Shapiro was putting a voucher program on the budget negotiating table, and expressing opposition.

Shapiro himself reiterated support for a voucher program in a Fox News interview on Friday, but said, “I’ve also made crystal clear that I won’t take a dollar out of our public schools in order to achieve that,” a position Mumin stressed on Monday as well.

The matter is further complicated by the court ruling earlier this year finding that the state is violating its own constitution by not equitability funding school districts, whose finances are largely dependent on the wealth of the local property tax base.

Using money for vouchers instead of beefing up state support to underfunded districts would be “a moral failure and a constitutional violation,” Williams warned.

Voucher programs generally refer to a system in which students have the ability to receive a set amount of public funding, a voucher, to apply toward education at a private school, typically in cases where the student is coming from a struggling district.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans have proposed bills creating “lifeline scholarships” in which students from the lowest-performing 15% of schools, as determined by standardized test scores, would be eligible for vouchers valued at anywhere between $2,500 and $15,000 per year, depending on the student’s grade and special education requirements.

That money would be drawn from individualized accounts with the state treasury, and could be used toward tuition and related fees at any private school that meets the standards of the state’s compulsory attendance law, including religious institutions.

The downside of it?

The idea has been endorsed by some Democrats as well, with the notion being that students in districts that are experiencing a rapid decline need an immediate way out as the state continues to struggle with its funding model.

“The house is now on fire, and what is a parent supposed to do? Wait for us to debate about funding for another 20 years while their children continue to become illiterate, graduate and go to prison?” posed Sen. Anthony Williams, a Democrat who represents parts of Philadelphia and Delaware counties, during Monday’s committee hearing.

Opponents argue that the creation of vouchers — which would be first-come, first-serve based on available funding — would make the situation worse for those students who remained in public schools, as state funding devoted to vouchers causes public schools to atrophy even further.

“There is no way to create so called lifeline scholarships without harming public school district funding,” Lindsay Williams said. “Any and every public tax dollar that is sent to a private or religious school is one less dollar than can be sent to our public schools.”

Kearney’s view

Pennsylvania already has programs — such as the Educational Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit — that serve a similar purpose.

The programs give

tax credits to companies that donate money to K-12 scholarship programs, with the state thus forgoing corporate tax revenue in order to subsidize private school tuitions. Those credits are valued at $340 million in the current budget year.

The EITC in particular has been criticized for opacity, given that the state collects very little data on how the scholarships are doled out.

As Kearney pointed out during Monday’s hearing, lawmakers don’t know if the scholarships are going to families who would otherwise be unable to pay for a private education.

“I think it’s imperative we understand the impact our current programs are having on our kids before we decide to create an additional program with new dollars for private education,” Kearney said, pointing to studies from other states with voucher programs showing they had little, or even negative, effects on achievement.