The Lakewood Student Transportation Authority (LSTA) just announced it has raised the cost of bussing for families who send their private school students to Jewish day schools. In addition to the standard annual $385 fee it has been charging for each of its 50,000 passengers, it must add $565 for a total of $945 per child. Why? Because the State and township has cut the voucher it allots LSTA for non-public school student transportation due to the statewide fiscal crunch. 

After all, what is a voucher but a financial grant to cover costs outside of traditional spending lines? (Yes, districts must provide transportation to all private school students but only if they live outside of the mandated distance of 2 miles for K-8 students and  2 and a half miles for high school students.) For years the state has sent millions of dollars a year to Lakewood for non-mandated  private school transportation, courtesy of a 2016 bill sponsored by Lakewood’s representative Sen. Bob Singer, certainly not a traditional line item.

No one has batted an eye.

Now Gov. Mikie Sherrill is faced with a different sort of voucher question, one that is the inverse of Lakewood’s transportation expenses: Should she opt into the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, which would let public schools receive, according to calculations by Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, an additional $1,000 per year in revenue for high-dosage tutoring, afterschool programs, field trips, summer school, etc? 

Or should the Governor turn down the money, prioritizing politics over children, because the program is a product of the Trump Administration?

Edunomics’ Marguerite Roza explains the program was originally conceived  as a private school voucher program and that stigma (in blue states) still drives opposition. But, she writes, “somehow in the final hours of negotiations and bill drafting, the language of the law got changed. What came out of the DC lawmaking sausage machine was something quite different.”:

“The currently signed law-of-the-land is a program whereby each taxpayer can direct $1,700 of their federal taxes to support students who attend private OR PUBLIC schools.”

Now, there is work involved in creating the apparatus needed to support the program, like approving scholarship-granting organizations and setting up the distribution process. (Here she and Chad Aldeman lay out one way to accomplish these necessary tasks for the money that will start flowing in January. Webinar here.)

New Jersey has been fine for a full decade with vouchers for private school transportation, at least in politically-powerful Lakewood. Why can’t we be okay with vouchers, paid for by federal tax credits that will only go to states that opt in, that could send an extra thousand dollars a year — or more!— to public school kids? Can we get past the toxicity of one word and make this about children, especially as public school budgets get tighter and tighter? 

Fingers crossed.