The Democratic trifecta in Illinois is poised to end a small school choice program used by less than 10,000 low-income students unless legislators renew it during their veto review session next week.
The Invest in Kids scholarship program was enacted in 2018 and uses tax credits to fund scholarships worth up to $75 million. The program currently provides scholarships for more than 9,000 students, all from lower-income backgrounds.
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) has danced around the program, saying he would sign a bill that extended it while also offering to “figure out how to wind down the program if it’s not extended.” The program is set to expire at the end of the year.
With unified control of the state legislature and supermajorities in both chambers, the Democrats have the fate of the program entirely in their hands and have shown little appetite for extending it. The state’s teachers union, the Illinois Education Association, has urged lawmakers to end the program, claiming it drains money from the public school system.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Republican state representative and member of the Illinois State Freedom Caucus Blaine Wilhour said it was “mind-boggling” that Democrats in the state were allowing the program to sunset as students continue to grapple with learning loss due to COVID-19 related school closures.
“The financial footprint is pretty, pretty low right now. It’s $75 million tops, which is about .9% of education funding in the state of Illinois,” Wilhour said. “[There are] 26,000 kids on a waiting list for this program, and the Democrats want to leave these kids in the lurch. It’s just mind-boggling to me that they can get away with this.”
With only a handful of legislative days left, all of them taking place next week, Wilhour said it’s “absolutely crunch time” to salvage the program. He noted that Pritzker could push Democrats in the legislature to preserve the program if he was so inclined.
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“We’ve seen in Illinois that when the governor supports something, he can put his considerable weight behind it and get it through the legislature,” Wilhour said. “He has done none of that here. It just seems that the Democrats would rather it just go away, the governor would rather it go away, and some Republicans would rather it just go away. We’re going to be the only state in the Union that’s moving backward on the most important issue of our times.”
Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
