State Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville), who chairs the House Ways and Means Education Committee, said any school choice legislation in Alabama needs to be properly vetted before it can pass.
Last week, the Parental Rights in Children’s Education (PRICE) Act, which would allow parents to get $6,000 in state tax dollars to put into an education savings account (ESA), was filed in the Alabama House and Senate.
Garrett discussed the school choice bill Friday on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal.”
“I think that school choice issue is gaining momentum around the country,” Garrett said. “I think step one is to understand what it is and what it isn’t. There are a lot of people that when they found out what it isn’t they’re not for it. Some people believe that if you pass school choice, if I live in this community that I’ll be able to go to the school in the next community. None of these bills do that.”
The lawmaker said there is still some concern about how much money school choice legislation would take away from public schools.
“It is a huge drain on the education budget,” he said. “It’s about a $600 million drain, as I understand, on the education budget if you took just the children that in homeschool and private school today, and their $6,900 left the education trust fund and went to those private or home schools, that would be a big gap in that Education Trust Fund and that money we would lose in terms of what we’re providing … now for the public schools.”
Garrett thinks there needs to be some safeguards put in place in order for ESAs to work for students in Alabama.
“One key thing that’s happened in all states I think that I have passed these is some accountability,” he said. “There’s some testing or something done to make sure that people that leave the system are getting proper education. (The PRICE Act) doesn’t have any of those accountability provisions.”
He also said the accountability would need to include something that makes sure schools outside the public school system are still decent places for students to learn.
“If you now set it up where we’ve got a model that would allow someone to open up a homeschool or cover school or open a private school or open a charter school, whatever, and not have the accountability, you run the risk of having some abuse of that bill,” he said. “So I think we need to make sure we’ve got the proper guardrails.
“It’s just another issue that needs to be vetted and understood.”
The budget chairman said while there’s agreement by most in the Legislature about adding more school choice options, there’s still is not a consensus on what exactly it should look like.
“I’ve heard from several people who are in favor of school choice, some are for this bill, some are not,” he said. “Some homeschoolers want it, some homeschoolers don’t. Some private schools have said yes, some have said no. Some advocates said we like this, some said there’s some problems with it. I think we have to vet and discuss it.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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