Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree during a committee meeting on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 in Columbia, S.C. (File/Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Senators never took a vote Wednesday during back-to-back meetings on legislation that would eventually qualify the vast majority of South Carolina parents for state aid covering tuition for private K-12 schools. But it’s on track to be the first bill passed in 2025.
The first vote on the proposal authored by Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree will be on the Senate floor after the legislative session kicks off Tuesday.
The biggest questions are how much of a fight Senate Democrats will put up in the chamber with a new GOP supermajority and how much — if any — of the wide-open qualifying criteria gets reined in.
“Almost everybody’s qualified,” Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said in Wednesday’s subcommittee meeting after the bill was explained.
He noted that advocates have presented the idea for two decades as an escape hatch for poor kids stuck in failing public schools whose parents can’t afford another option. But that’s no longer the focus in a bill that enables wealthy parents to use state aid for high-dollar private schools their children already attend, he said.
“Parents who have already made arrangements and can afford to send their children there are going to receive this windfall from the state,” Hutto said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
The bill advanced from subcommittee to full committee Wednesday in meetings intended as informational sessions. They largely turned into back-and-forth shows between Hutto and Hembree.
Sen. Ross Turner, R-Greenville, asked if there was some way to stagger enrollment to give poor children priority.
“I’d hate to see this filled up with” students from higher-income homes, shutting out the students the program was originally designed to help, he said.
After the meetings, Hembree told reporters he will try to amend his own bill during floor debate to reset the law’s starting point so that “those most in need have the first bite of the apple.”
What the bill does
As pre-filed last month, his bill would provide $8,500 scholarships next school year to up to 10,000 students whose parents earn up to 300% of federal poverty guidelines, with scholarships approved on a first-come, first-served basis. Within two years, parents could earn up to 600% above the poverty line and still qualify. That’s $187,200 for a family of four, according to 2024 guidelines (the amounts are adjusted yearly). And that’s almost three times the median household income in South Carolina, according to the latest census estimates.
New SC school choice plan increases income eligibility and tuition aid
The bill caps participation at 15,000 students starting next year. Basic math means roughly $130 million in taxpayer dollars could be spent starting with the 2026-27 school year on private tuition and other allowed expenses, which includes tutoring, uniforms, textbooks and computers. That would equal 2% of the $6.3 billion the state spends on public K-12 schools this school year (traditional and charter schools).
The actual cost would depend on how many eligible students enroll and how much aid the state sends public schools, since the bill ties the scholarship amount to the per-pupil average sent to districts. That would put scholarships for 2025-26 at $8,547 each, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.
Hembree said his amendment next week will propose starting next school year with the same eligibility rules and participation cap as this year’s program, which would mean up to 5,000 Medicaid-eligible students could get a scholarship. Delaying the expansion by a year would bake in priority for lower-income students, since the bill guarantees participating students first dibs on slots the next year and allows their siblings to apply early.
“Those who need it the most should be able to access it,” said the Little River Republican.
But he’s unsure he’ll be able to limit criteria at all, noting some Republicans are pushing for so-called universal school choice. He said he saw his bill as a middle ground.
Republicans who rule both chambers want to move fast on the bill after the state Supreme Court halted this school year’s fledgling program.
In a split opinion last September, a majority of justices ruled the private school scholarships violated the state constitution’s prohibition against public dollars directly benefiting private education.
Hembree’s bill seeks to get around that by taking the scholarship money from lottery profits instead of the state’s general fund. He noted the state’s high court has already said it’s OK for lottery-funded scholarships to be used for tuition at private colleges.
But lottery money is still public money, Hutto said.
Giving what’s likely a preview of the upcoming court challenge, he argued the ban in the state constitution is in a section specifically about K-12 schools, and that’s why it doesn’t affect college scholarships. Hembree disagreed with that interpretation.
Ultimately, the state’s high court will decide who’s right.
Another lawsuit is sure to come. It’s another reason Republicans want to quickly pass a new voucher law — to get the next challenge in front of the state Supreme Court as quickly as possible, in hopes a different outcome will enable the scholarship aid to resume.
While up to 5,000 children could participate in the program created through a 2023 law, only 2,880 K-12 students were eligible and enrolled. And only about a quarter of those students were using their state aid for private tuition when the ruling stopped those payments, according to court documents.
Hembree acknowledged the program will not improve public schools, as some advocates have argued for years.
Even when the cap moves to 15,000, that still represents just 2% of students in K-12 public schools statewide, he noted.
“It’s not going to change the educational system. It’s not. It’s just not,” he said. “It’s not the magic bullet that will fix education in South Carolina. But for that one kid, or 10,000, or 15,000,” it can change their lives.
Hutto argued the $130 million that could soon pay for private tuition would be much better spent in public schools, whether putting it toward teacher salaries or providing poor, rural districts money to fix their buildings.
“I wish we were talking about things affecting the 750,000 rather than focus on 15,000,” he said.