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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | February 2, 2021 02:57 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Christopher M. Rabb |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Ensuring equity, accountability & transparency for the EITC and OSTC programs |
| Poverty perpetuates itself. With access to quality education, those living in poverty have a better chance of breaking the cycle. It is not fair that a child living in a household reliant on an annual income of $30,000 must compete for a scholarship against a child whose family earns over three times that amount. This glaring inequity is why I am introducing legislation to amend the Public School Code of 1949 to ensure that children living in poverty are prioritized in the granting of these scholarships. When the educational improvement tax credit program was enacted in 2001, the maximum annual household income allowance was $50,000. My legislation sets this threshold at $73,000 to account for the cost of inflation since the program’s enactment and removes the applicable income allowance of an additional $15,000 per child. This legislation also places more accountability measures on the scholarship organizations, the businesses that donate to them, and the schools that receive funding on behalf of a scholarship recipient, so that we know exactly who is benefiting from these programs so we can make adjustments in the future, if necessary. Children from poor and working-class families deserve a quality education that provides them with the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty and, as legislators, we can make that happen. Please join me in bringing equity, accountability and transparency to the educational improvement and opportunity scholarship tax credit programs by sponsoring this important legislation. |
Introduced as HB1730