Corporations could receive a tax credit for paying for low- and middle-income students to attend private schools under a measure that narrowly passed the Virginia Senate on Friday on a party-line vote.
Passage came with Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling's tiebreaking vote, and over the protests of Democrats who said the measure will sap money from public schools that will be left with fixed costs and who questioned its constitutionality.
"This is a war on K-12 education," said Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond. "This is a direct attack on K-12, make no mistake about it."
Proponents said the measure will give families a choice in their children's education and will not have a negative impact on public school spending because the state would save the cost of educating the child in a public school.
Senate Bill 131 would allow a tax credit of 65 percent and cap the total at $25 million. A version brought by Del. Jimmie Massie, R-Henrico, has passed the GOP-controlled House of Delegates, but the two bills have several differences.
In the Senate version, co-sponsored by Sens. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, and William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin County, students would be eligible if their family's annual household income is 300 percent of the current federal poverty guidelines or less. For a family of four, that's $69,150.
The amount of the scholarships would be capped based on the state funding per student in the district where the child resides. The allocations can range from about $2,000 for a student in a wealthier area to $6,000 in a less-affluent district.
The $25 million in credits contemplated in the bill ordinarily would funnel into the general fund, which pays for things such as schools, health care and police.
Corporations would donate to a nonprofit that doles out scholarships.
Democrats have questioned the measure's constitutionality, saying the state cannot appropriate money to a charity not controlled by the government.
Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, voted against the measure in a committee but supported it Friday "to give it a chance to see if it will work." The bill would take effect in 2014 and expire in 2017.
"We have got to broaden our view on things like this," he said in a floor speech that referred to Petersburg schools, which have struggled academically. "We can't be static. We cannot just assume that because we did it this way in the past, that it's got to always do it this way in the future."
Sen. David W. Marsden, D-Fairfax, questioned the bill's impact on public school costs based on taking one child out of a school.
"We take that child out, have we released a teacher, a custodian, an administrator, a nurse, a librarian? No. … All the overhead is still there," he said. "Are the lights still on? Is the heat still on? You betcha. So we've saved almost nothing."
Obenshain said later Friday that the vote "fell along party lines, but that will not be the end of the story.
"In other states, similar scholarship programs worked so well that members of both parties practically raced each other to get on board."
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