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To the Editor:
The old saying about things being too good to be true came to mind as I read Bill Chenevert’s glowing report on how businesses are using tax credits to benefit tuition-based schools (“Extra credit for our schools,” Jan. 8).
There are, however, several facts missing from this report. First, the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Act enacted in 2012 by the Corbett Administration is an offshoot of an older, mostly ignored version called the Education Improvement Tax Credit Act (’01). These laws were especially written to circumvent our state constitution’s explicit prohibition against giving tax money to religious schools.
Article III, Section 15 of the Pennsylvania State Constitution says “No money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.”
If the constitution were not explicit and voters not interested, state Sen. Anthony Williams would already have had a voucher law passed and signed by Corbett. Instead, the administration passed what can rightfully be called a “back door voucher” plan.
The way the tax credit laws work, any eligible business like the multinational, multibillion dollar corporation UGI Energy, may contribute up to $800,000 in a single tax year to a middleman Opportunity Scholarship Organization like the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia, which can then distribute the money to selected private and religious schools. There are dozens of such organizations throughout the commonwealth.
Mr. Chenevert’s article also left out that UGI Energy can then receive up to 90 percent of its contribution as a tax credit. Some of that, I am sure, goes to pay fees and salaries for those who organize and distribute the money. The total taxpayer supported funding for OSTC and EITC scholarships so far is close to $200 million per year and growing. That amount is, of course, deducted from the basic education budget for the whole state, exactly what the constitution intended to prevent.
This slight of hand may be legal (as long as it is not challenged in court), but in the old days, when we heard of organizations that helped big shots to avoid taxes, we winked and called the practice “money laundering.”
Some of that money, of course, ends up in the pockets of the private education management organization mentioned in Chenevert’s article, Independence Mission Schools. IMS was handed control of about 15 parochial schools in Philadelphia. As stated in the report, these schools are no longer part of the Archdiocese, and two- thirds of their students are non-Catholic. However, they promise to use a “Catholic” based curriculum. They also depend heavily on these tax-supported scholarships to fund their tuition-based, tax-exempt schools.
Independence Mission Schools has also been a recipient of grant money from a corporate education reform group called the Philadelphia School Partnership, which also supports charter schools. The goal of the PSP is to raise $100 million in private investments to convert as many public (and some religious) schools as possible into privately managed businesses. For profit, of course. Without paying taxes, of course.
Many readers by now will say, (yawn) so what? Like UGI spokesperson, Alisa Harris, some will say that no matter what type of school: public, private or religious, education should be a “choice” and these scholarships enable poor children to have a choice. That sounds like a nice pie in the sky ideal, except that, for private, parochial or charter schools, the real choice forever remains with the school, not the parents. The article even reports a lottery for these IMS schools. No guarantees. Take your chances. Good luck!
The fundamental reason we have an established public education system, that separates church and state, is to guarantee that all children have a seat in school. The more we privatize, commercialize and deconstruct what is essentially a public entitlement, the more we encourage an elite, undemocratic and clearly unconstitutional system of privately- managed education, financed by the same taxpayers whose children might be denied entry.
Gloria C. Endres
South Philadelphia
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