From Education Voters of Pennsylvania (http://www.educationvoterspa.org/):
As we enter 2018, the PA legislature is picking up where it left off on its attack on our children’s public schools.
Before the holidays, Republican leaders rigged the membership of the Senate Education Committee in hopes that it will now have enough votes to pass Senate Bill 2, education savings account voucher legislation. We expect them to move this legislation in the upcoming weeks.
We are putting together a campaign and we are going to stop vouchers from coming to Pennsylvania. You can be part of it!
- Ask your local school board to pass this resolution in opposition to Senate Bill 2. Email your district superintendent and school board president this link (https://www.votervoice.net/iframes/PSBA/newsletters/28109) and ask them to put it on their next school board agenda.
- Many of you have already sent a letter to your state lawmakers asking them to oppose Senate Bill 2 and education savings account vouchers. Go to https://actionnetwork.org/letters/oppose-senate-bill-2-the-education-savings-account-voucher-scheme to send another one and please share this action with your networks so that as lawmakers decide whether to support or oppose this bill they know their constituents are watching them.
We’ll need people to be on the phones calling our lawmakers when the bill comes out of committee, as we anticipate it probably will. Click HERE to sign up to be a top activist who will call your state lawmakers. When we are ready to go, we want to know that we can count on you.
Why do we oppose education savings account vouchers? For a lot of reasons!
- ESA vouchers will drain desperately-needed funding from public schools and reduce access to educational opportunities for all students in order to fund the private education of a few.
- ESA vouchers enshrine discrimination against Pennsylvania’s children into law. ESAs allow private schools accepting taxpayer dollars to discriminate on the basis of gender, religion, and disability status. Students with disabilities, if they are permitted to enroll in a private school, must give up their rights under Federal law to an appropriate education.
- ESA vouchers in SB 2 are designed to benefit wealthy families. There are no income limits for families that are eligible for ESAs and the amount of funding a family receives in an ESA in many cases will not be enough to cover the full tuition at a private school.
- ESA vouchers are expensive to administer and financial oversight and accountability are limited, leaving taxpayer dollars ripe for waste, fraud, and abuse.
We are not alone in our opposition to school vouchers. Education Voters has joined a new statewide coalition of more than 20 organizations that are fighting against education savings account vouchers. As we move forward with our advocacy campaign, we will team up with partners from Pennsylvanians Opposed to Vouchers to raise our voices loudly and together in opposition to this scheme and in support of public education.
We will have many opportunities in 2018 to have a significant and positive impact on PA’s public schoolchildren. Thank you for your continued support of public education.
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