School choice or a drain on public education? Backers aim to save controversial private school tax credit left out of new Illinois budget
After navigating Chicago Public Schools’ selective enrollment process, in which students can apply to schools outside their neighborhoods, Yuridia Alcantar was crushed.
It wasn’t that her daughter, Jahayra Flores, didn’t get into a high-performing high school. The problem for Alcantar as a single parent was getting the eldest of her three kids to Lane Tech College Prep on the North Side every day from the family’s East Side home.
“I couldn’t take her because I had a full-time job,” said Alcantar, a legal secretary. CPS transportation wasn’t feasible, either. “It was difficult because I see what she wants to achieve. ... I had to say no to her and say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make that drive.’”
But, as one of thousands of students across Illinois who received an Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship to attend a private school this school year, Flores said she feels better off at St. Francis de Sales High School, the small Catholic school on the East Side where she enrolled instead.
“It’s provided me with so many opportunities,” Flores, a rising senior, said of the scholarship and one-on-one time she gets with educators. “Why take that away?”
Created through state legislation in 2017, Invest in Kids provides what are effectively public subsidies, in the way of tax credits, for children from low-to-moderate income families to attend private schools. Its newly uncertain fate has refueled the long-running debate regarding the use of tax credits to help fund mainly religious schools.
The way it works is individuals and corporations can donate funds for private school scholarships, and in exchange get a 75% income tax credit, capped at $1 million. A handful of nonprofits process applications and distribute the aid. The maximum allowed in total annual contributions is $75 million.
The program has become a linchpin issue for Republicans who have railed against the Democratic-led legislature and its recently enacted state budget.
That budget did not include an extension of Invest in Kids beyond the next school year. But Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has repeatedly left the door open to renewing the program, an indication that there’s a variety of interests at play. He’s said he would consider keeping it, in modified form, if lawmakers approve it in the fall legislative session.
“I can’t speak to the decisions that were made across the General Assembly about it. It’s obviously a program that’s been around for a number of years now. I think there’s time still for that program to be considered,” Pritzker said Wednesday after signing the budget into law. He noted it’s “just one piece” of the “significant dollars (put) forward to support education in every possible way. That just happens to be one that’s still left dangling.”
Opponents of Invest in Kids contend the program is a diversion of state tax dollars to bolster theological-based education. Of the private schools that state records show have received Invest in Kids funds, some have policies that potentially deny entry to students who are LGBTQ, who are pregnant or have fathered a child, who are not U.S. citizens or who have certain disabilities, according to school websites or publicly available handbooks.
Critics also point to the deficit between the amount of state aid that Illinois’ funding formula determines should go to public schools and the actual figure — a gap of at least $5 billion in the 2022-23 school year according to Illinois State Board of Education data.
Supporters pitch the program as a benefit to students who otherwise couldn’t access a private education.
“These citizens, these children, whose lives have been forever changed by scholarships to schools their parents or guardians would never be able to afford, have been left behind today in this budget,” Republican state Sen. John Curran of Downers Grove said in the closing hours of the spring session.
Enrollment and scholarship figures reported by ISBE and the Department of Revenue, however, suggest some awards might have gone to families who’d previously paid tuition. One school, for example, saw an enrollment increase of five students in the 2020-21 school year, but the number of scholarship students increased by 50.
That doesn’t mean it was easy for parents who may have already been paying tuition, said Maria Hubbart, a parent who said she took a second job as a dialysis technician, expecting to cover her freshman son’s tuition at St. Francis de Sales before he received a partial Invest in Kids award. “Bad” and “terrible” is how she describes safety and class sizes at the two public high schools in the neighborhood. “Which one do you choose?”
The most recent Department of Revenue report shows the school’s scholarship students are mostly Black and Latino and come from families earning less than 185% of the poverty level, or $40,626 per year for a three-person household.
Invest in Kids mandates priority be given to students at or below that poverty level, as well as to children in districts where student performance is below the state average or that have low graduation rates. Previous recipients and their siblings are also given preference.
“It was a big relief,” Hubbart said of her son’s Invest in Kids award. “I hope that they will make better schools for the rest of the kids that cannot have scholarships.”
Not all students welcome
Catherine Henchek, a former private school parent whose son now attends CPS’ Vaughn Occupational High School, spoke out against Invest in Kids this spring, telling lawmakers about her attempt to enroll her son in prekindergarten at the private school his older sister attended. When he was turned away because he has special needs, Henchek said, she was shocked and left with a load of worries, from where he’d attend to whether she should transfer her daughter. “It was like, ‘What is the future going to be?’ ”
That predated Invest in Kids, but some private schools that have received program funds specify that they can’t always accept students with disabilities. State laws require the organizations that grant the scholarships to comply with the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race and national origin. Students with disabilities may receive larger awards, but state and federal laws protecting the right of students with disabilities to a public education don’t similarly apply to private schools.
“The fact that there was a requirement to take him (in CPS) was a good thing. Schools that are receiving any public money should have to take everybody,” said Henchek, who’s chair of Vaughn’s Local School Council.
“This is really public money, going around in a very roundabout manner, through the tax credits,” she said. “All (public) schools in Chicago are under-resourced at the moment.” The state has acknowledged CPS receives around $1 billion less in funding than the district is owed under school funding reform legislation passed in 2017.
Henchek said she’s also uncomfortable with the combining of church and state — a subject of an ongoing national debate over various voucher and tax credit programs that shift public dollars to private schools. An Oklahoma school board recently extended the concept ever further, voting to establish a Catholic charter school, reportedly the U.S.’s first publicly funded religious school.
Flores, the St. Francis de Sales student said, “We do have theology classes here. But they’re so based around, growing into yourself, becoming a better person. It’s always spirituality — it’s never religious stuff as spirituality — and figuring out who you are as a person.” Her family and others that spoke to the Tribune are Catholic.
The East Side high school is part of a network supported by the Big Shoulders Fund, which is one of seven nonprofits certified by the Department of Revenue to accept Invest in Kids donations and grant students awards. The organization also provides separate scholarships and other support to Catholic schools in Illinois and Indiana.
Josh Hale, the Big Shoulders Fund’s president and CEO, said more than a third of the nearly 20,000 students from predominantly low-income households in its network aren’t Catholic. He said the schools embrace every child and are committed to providing safe, engaging environments. “For me personally and for Big Shoulders Fund as an institution, we value and celebrate diversity and a more inclusive community,” Hale said. “We believe our mission and the environments fostered within our schools play a critical role in adding to a more equitable world.”
Policies among other Illinois Catholic schools that have received Invest in Kids funds, however, include a ban on transgender students taking hormone therapy medication on school property, the potential expulsion of students who’ve had an abortion and special rules imposed on students who are pregnant or have children.
Rising senior Brooklyn Oliver said at St. Francis de Sales, the environment cultivated by Principal Roni Facen, a Latina alumna from the neighborhood, offers a degree of inclusivity she can’t assume she’d find elsewhere as a Black student. Her dad, Terry Oliver, said receiving the scholarship was “a lift off my shoulders,” at a time when he had to stop working because of a disability.
Rising sophomore Delilah Reyes described the community as a comfort amid all of the challenges of adolescence. Her mother, Maria Paz, said she feared that, in the neighborhood CPS high school she once attended, her daughter might struggle to meet her full potential.
It’s understandable some families see the tax credit scholarships as a godsend, said Cassie Creswell, executive director of Illinois Families for Public Schools. “But from a policy level, we need to look at what is best overall” for Chicago and the state.
Creswell said that while it’s possible the state could try to prohibit schools with exclusionary policies from participating in the program, a number of legal and practical hurdles make that unrealistic.
“Our position is that the only solution on this issue is that the state should get out of the practice of funding private school tuition entirely,” Creswell said.
Robust scholarship funds for religious schools existed before 2017, she said, and taxpayers who make direct donations to charitable organizations, outside of the Invest in Kids program, can still receive a credit from the federal government. Creswell also pointed to studies that have found the academic outcomes of students in voucher programs in other states didn’t show an improvement.
Although the Invest in Kids Act required the state education board to create an annual report on the learning gains of students receiving scholarships, the jury is out on the program’s results. Such a report has yet to be released, but the first should be out by late November, an ISBE spokesperson said, citing COVID-19 as the source of the delay.
Pritzker’s shifting position
In addition to Republicans, allied groups and religious organizations such as the Archdiocese of Chicago, the program also has backers within the Democratic legislative supermajority. That includes lawmakers with more moderate to conservative religious backgrounds, as well as some in the legislative Black Caucus who are politically close to their local churches.
That, in part, helps explain the change Pritzker has had on the tax credit. As a candidate for governor in 2018, he vowed to repeal the program. But after winning office, he signed a legislative initiative that extended the program for a year beyond its original sunset date and expanded it to private trade schools.
Pritzker has deferred to legislators on whether they want to keep the program — in part as a negotiating chip with Republicans in an effort to get GOP votes on a budget. But he has said the program should be modified to allow a federal as well as state income tax deduction for donations, which is currently not allowed. That would share its costs between federal and state taxpayers.
The program passed as part of a comprehensive measure that most notably contained a historic rewrite of the state’s school aid formula. It included a commitment of at least $350 million in additional dollars each year toward improving the neediest schools. The reform also committed the state to providing public schools the full funding prescribed by the new formula by 2027.
The scholarship program was literally such a consolation prize for Republicans that then-GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner — still smarting from a bipartisan legislative revolt after a record two-year budget impasse — never even mentioned it when he signed the school funding bill into law.
Last month, in the closing hours of the legislative session, Republicans offered up a variety of complaints about the new $50.4 billion state budget plan: little GOP involvement, lack of business tax incentives, opposition to a legislative pay raise.
But the most common sticking point was the failure to extend the scholarship program, which they said would put students in jeopardy in the middle of the 2023-24 school year. Something that state officials say is incorrect. And Pritzker and Democratic legislative leaders questioned if Invest in Kids was such a major priority of Republicans, why they did not push to make it part of the budget backed up with their votes. No Republicans voted for the budget.
Hale said the Big Shoulders Fund awards scholarships for the entire school year in single lump-sum payments. If the program isn’t extended past December, the organization said it will receive donations and award scholarships up to the last day of the year and disburse the funds as soon as possible in 2024.
A ‘win’ for public education
The sunset of the program has also served as a platform for Republicans to tee off on the political power of teachers unions.
“This program is not on the chopping block because it has not been successful. It’s on the chopping block because the teachers union deem it as a threat to their control,” said state Rep. Blaine Wilhour of Beecher City.
But the unions contend the program represents an improper diversion of state taxpayer money to private schools with religious requirements for admission and attendance that would be considered discrimination at public schools.
The Illinois Education Association used its Twitter account to note that Invest in Kids was not funded in the budget and declared it “a win for public education.”
The unions are on guard to fight against any effort to extend the program in the fall.
“The 2020 national Democratic Party platform proclaims that Democrats oppose vouchers and similar programs, and for good reason,” said Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, citing discriminatory policies. “Expansion of vouchers is exactly what’s happening under radical right-wing Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. Illinois Democrats, including Gov. Pritzker, must stand up and refuse to let that happen here.”
Curran said he rejects the notion that Invest in Kids comes at the price of public education, saying it was doubtful the program’s elimination would mean additional funding for public schools beyond what lawmakers already authorized.
“Invest in Kids is not taking any money from the public schools,” he told the Tribune. “We have leaned in very strongly on putting additional tax dollars into public education.”
At the pace of the mandated minimum of $350 million lawmakers have increased public school funding each year with the exception of 2021, the state will not meet its commitment to provide full funding by 2027 for two decades, according to a study by the Education Law Center.
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner and Dan Petrella contributed.
