by (in alphabetical order) John Garrett Clawson, Cassie Davis, Reynaldo De La Garza, Katie Floyd , Sarah Pollock
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This can exacerbate the expenses associated with the program as the state must increasingly bear new education costs associated with children whose parents never intended to send them to public school in the first place. Today, taxpayers are not liable to pay for the private education of students electing to leave the public system, but an ESA program could compel the state to award them public funds as well. SB 1178 stipulated that participants in the hypothetical ESA program would have to be enrolled in a public school the year prior or eligible to enter first grade for the first time in the upcoming school year. Initially, this would suppress the number of existing private school parents eligible for state dollars. However, this “safeguard” would only be temporary in nature as all students in Texas would have access to eligibility within 12 years of the law’s passage (as most students in the education system at that time would have entered first grade after implementation). In fact, all students could obtain eligibility two years after program implementation if all current private school students and homeschool students enrolled in public schools for one year then requested an ESA to return to his/her non-public education.
TALK ABOUT EFFECTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS - MAY BE SIMILAR TO HOUSTON SITUATION AND FORCE DISTRICTS INTO RECAPTURE
A variety of scenarios can be analyzed to better understand the fiscal impacts of different eligibility requirements and take-up rates. While levels of per-student spending vary between Independent School Districts, the estimates below utilize the anticipated 2017 state average of $10,371 (CPPP 2016). This figure is comprised of both state and local spending per student; the proportion of the total per-student spending coming from the state also varies between districts as poorer ISDs receive a greater fraction of their funds from state disbursements.The state would expect to save 20% of this total for each public school student that left the system with an ESA (given that they do not participate in special education, in which case the state saves no money). However, the state would lose money for every student that participated that would have never enrolled in a public school without the presence of the program. The figures below are produced by multiplying the number of non-public school students by $8,296 (80 percent of the average per-student expenditure). The estimates assume that the hypothetical Texas program is similar to the Nevada program and has no enrollment cap.
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Sandra Chereb. “Nevada Supreme Court Strikes Down School Choice Funding Method.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. September 29, 2016.
S.B. 1178, Texas 84th Cong. (2015).
S.B. 1363 Fiscal Note, Arizona 51st Cong. Schimpp, Steve. (2013).
S.B. 2695, Mississippi 114th Cong. (2015).
S.B. 302, Nevada 302nd Cong. (2015).
S.B. 431, Tennessee 431st Cong. (2015).
S.N. 850, Florida 116th Cong. (2014).
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