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COLUMBIA — A Pennsylvania billionaire will cover this year’s private tuition costs for South Carolina students who lost their taxpayer-funded scholarships when the state Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.
A $900,000 donation from Jeff Yass, the co-founder of a global investment firm, will keep students impacted by last month’s ruling in their private school through at least this semester, the Palmetto Promise Institute announced Thursday.
Roughly 700 students were paying tuition with the state aid when South Carolina’s high court declared the payments violated the state constitution’s ban on public money directly benefiting private education.
The ruling came after the first of four, $1,500 installments had already been deposited in parents’ accounts, leaving them scrambling on how to avoid transferring their children mid-year to their local public school. For the program’s inaugural year, only Medicaid-eligible students could participate, making it less likely their parents could pay the private tuition on their own.
“Over the last few weeks, our hearts have been broken by the stories of the low-income families who had settled into new schools that better fit their children only to have their scholarships ripped away in the middle of the school year,” said Wendy Damron, CEO of Palmetto Promise Institute, which has been the state’s leading proponent of school choice legislation for over a decade.
The conservative think tank not only helped write and successfully pushed for the law that passed last year, but it also spread the word through mailers, social media ads and other marketing to educate parents about it and help them sign up for the program’s inaugural year.
So, when the ruling immediately ended parents’ ability to use the money for private tuition, “we felt awful, just awful about it,” Damron told the SC Daily Gazette.
So, she started making phone calls: “I didn’t know if I could raise the money, but I had to try,” she said.
Soon after the ruling, the Catholic diocese for South Carolina began raising money to cover tuition for the 195 students enrolled in its 32 schools statewide.
Between the diocese’s fundraising and Yass’ donation, this semester’s tuition for all students in the program should be covered, Damron said.
The institute is working with the state Department of Education and the company it contracts with to manage parents’ accounts to pay the schools directly. The money will not go to parents.
The donation is a temporary fix. What happens next semester is unclear.
Passing another school choice law that could survive a legal challenge is a top priority for the Legislature’s GOP leaders. But even if they manage to quickly pass a new law after the session starts in January, another lawsuit is a near-certainty. Whatever happens, it’s unlikely that parents will be able to resume using their state aid for private tuition before the school year ends.
The Palmetto Promise Institute will continue pushing for a new law early in the session, while recognizing “we’ve got to raise another million for January and another million for April,” Damron said.
The ruling only banned private tuition payments. The quarterly allotments of $1,500 will continue flowing into parents’ accounts. And parents can still access their accounts through the online portal to direct payments for other approved expenses, such as tutoring, speech therapy and textbooks. They just can’t use it for tuition.