For David Warner, choosing a school for his son was a “very personal” decision, he said. The ability to select the place where he could learn near their home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, made him and his family feel valued, a stark contrast, David said, to his experience with assigned public schools.
But [yesterday], a state supreme court ruling in a lawsuit supported by teachers unions will cancel the scholarships for some 3,000 children from low and moderate-income families. “It feels like the light has gone out,” David told me, “and we fear being left in the dark again.”
In 2023, South Carolina lawmakers enacted the Education Scholarship Trust Fund Program, which offered children from homes with incomes at 200 percent or less of the federal poverty line (approximately $60,000 for a family of four) the opportunity to use an education savings account. Participating families were awarded accounts worth $6,000 for use on education products and services such as personal tutoring, textbooks, private school tuition, and more. Some 19 states around the U.S. had similar account-style options for families.
Now the number is 18. The state chapter of the National Education Association (NEA), a teacher union, filed a lawsuit against the accounts last October. The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled the program unconstitutional, saying the accounts are a “direct” benefit to private schools and violate the state constitution, even though the state awards the accounts to parents, not schools.
The ruling is devastating for families like the Warners because their child’s account may end immediately. “In just a few weeks of being in this program, we saw a completely different approach to education. We had more communication from teachers and staff, greater family interaction, and they valued our input in ways the public school never did,” David said.
He explains that the private school aligned with his family’s values and was transparent about what was being taught in the classroom. “The curriculum and teaching were totally transparent, allowing us to know exactly what our children were learning,” he said.
He fears having a “tough conversation” with his son about returning to the assigned school where he struggled to fit in. “He just made new friends, and now he may have to leave them, all because of this decision,” David said. “This ruling implies that low-income families are irresponsible and that the educational elite know better than parents, but that’s not true for us,” he says.
The Warners’ other son has special needs, and David adjusted his work commitments to care for this child. “Just because a family is low-income doesn’t mean they can’t make the best, most responsible choices for their children’s education,” David said.
Thousands of stories like this one should reach state lawmakers this fall as they prepare for the next legislative session. Policymakers can still help South Carolina families by considering other education choice innovations such as the new Parental Choice Tax Credit in Oklahoma. With this state tax credit, parents can receive tax credits worth up to $7,500 for private school tuition expenses and other education products and services. Every K-12 student in Oklahoma is eligible to apply.
Lawmakers nationwide continue to adopt new learning options for students, even in states with existing private school scholarship offerings such as vouchers. Lawmakers in Wyoming and Louisiana approved education savings accounts this year, and Louisiana added these accounts in addition to the state’s existing voucher program. Oklahoma families can “stack” their tax credits on top of the existing voucher options in that state. South Carolina lawmakers should consider solutions such as these as they look for ways to help families.
“We hope that, in the end, families in South Carolina will prevail so we can continue making the best decisions for our children,” David says. Unions shut the lights off for children in the state for now, but lawmakers have plenty of alternatives at their disposal to give families and students a bright future.