Some governors use virus aid for school choice
When Congress sent states billions of dollars early in the coronavirus pandemic to help make schools safe, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee saw an opportunity.
He used part of the windfall to further his goal of offering school choice options for parents, sending millions to charter schools that operate without traditional public oversight. That included funneling more than $4 million to new charters that are not scheduled to open until at least next year.
It was an easy way for the Republican governor to advance a long-held priority. For Lee and some other GOP governors, the discretionary money was a chance to sidestep their state legislatures and advance school choice, which typically involves funding charter schools or offering vouchers so parents can use taxpayer money to pay private school tuition.
Teachers unions and other critics view the efforts as a way to siphon money away from traditional public schools.
“This feels like he’s taking advantage of the pandemic and the pandemic relief to further his ideological goal of defunding the traditional public schools,” said state Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat and retired teacher.
In a series of bills since the COVID-19 outbreak began last year, Congress has allocated $190 billion to help public and private schools weather the pandemic. Although there is no centralized way to see how districts and private schools are spending the aid, The Associated Press tracked most of that money to determine how much was received by virtually every school district in the country and to analyze the ways governors distributed the assistance they were free to dole out as they wished.
In the initial wave of funding, governors were given $3 billion with few strings attached but the expectation that it be used to help schools and colleges “most significantly impacted by coronavirus.”
They used that money in a variety of ways: New Jersey supported colleges. Oregon used it to make sure even tiny rural districts received minimum amounts of aid. States including Indiana and Colorado established competitive grant programs for school districts.
This week, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced he was using a separate pot of federal pandemic aid to create a $10 million grant initiative similar to the state’s existing private school voucher program. It was the Republican governor’s latest attempt to push back against public school districts that are defying a state ban on mask mandates. The funding allows grants up to $7,000 per student if their public school requires masks, orders quarantines due to COVID-19 exposure or gives different treatment to vaccinated students.
In Tennessee, Lee has long been an advocate of launching more charter schools — institutions that are publicly funded but operate outside traditional school districts.
In a feature that appeals to many conservatives, they usually do not have unionized teachers.
Oklahoma’s GOP governor, Kevin Stitt, used $10 million of the nearly $40 million in his governor-controlled fund to create a stay-in-school program that funded scholarships for lower-income students who already attend private schools.
The state education secretary, Ryan Walters, said the state was hearing from parents who lost income early in the pandemic and could not keep paying private-school tuition.
“Moving them in the middle of a pandemic to a brand-new school would create even more trauma for them,” he said.
Most Oklahoma private schools are religious. One exception is Positive Tomorrows, an Oklahoma City school exclusively for students in families experiencing homelessness.
The school usually costs around $3 million a year to run, with many expenses paid through donations. It got about $350,000 from Stitt’s program, plus another $250,000 in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans from the federal government to keep paying teachers and staff. Public schools did not have access to the forgivable loans.
“Because of the role that we serve, I think we deserve some government funding,” said Susan Agel, president of the school. “This is a kind of thing that I’d really like to see more of, particularly for our school.”