Senate Again Fails on School Choice for Families
Earlier this week, Virginia’s senators once again had the opportunity to provide families access to greater educational options. Sadly, for Virginia’s families and students, the majority of those senators stood with the teacher’s union instead of with families.
HB1965 was up before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. We were very honored that Virginia Walden Ford and her sister, Harrietta Fowler, both of DC Parents for School Choice, made the trip to Richmond to testify in support of school choice for families. Having fought so hard for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, and now seeing its incredible impact for thousands of students in the District, Ms. Ford and Ms. Fowler know first-hand the power of school choice in a child’s life.
Many of our other partners here at School Choice Virginia also spoke on behalf of the bill: the Virginia Family Foundation, the Virginia Catholic Conference and the Old Dominion Association of Christian Schools.
Sadly, most of the Committee did not seem interested in the broad, statewide support for school choice. Even when the patron of the bill, Delegate Saxman, noted that the Commonwealth already has in place a $100 million tax credit program for land preservation, and a $60 million tax credit for one of the state’s tobacco companies, the majority of the committee did not seem to think a small investment in education was a similarly worthy investment.
We do wish to thank Senators Stosch, Stolle, Norment and Watkins for their “no” votes on the motion to pass the bill by indefinitely (kill the bill).
The Family Foundation has also written about the Committee hearing on their blog, as well as having videotaped the hearing. We appreciate all their work on this issue and for allowing Virginians the opportunity to see how the Senators voted.
Even though the bill may have been defeated this year, we are more excited than ever about our opportunities moving forward. We have been so encouraged by all the new folks we have had signing up on the website and our Facebook group, and we are only going to build on this momentum in the next year!
Stay tuned to how you can get involved and what you can do to help bring greater access to educational options for Virginia’s families!
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