PJ Media

I am pretty amazed by Laura McKenna’s comments. I am on the school board of a small Christian school right on the outskirts of Philadelphia. About half of our students come from the Philadelphia School District. Our tuition is significantly under $5000 a year, and we manage to balance the budget most years, with difficulty (we rely on donations to make up for tuition shortfalls). $5000-7000 a year per student from vouchers would make a phenomenal difference in our ability to educate students. It would literally represent an almost 50% rise in our budget. And if we somehow got the more than $13,000 per student Philly spends on its schools, we would literally have to BUILD A NEW BIGGER SCHOOL to find something to do with all that money! (We would love to do this now but can’t, since parents are paying school tax plus tuition.) Laura McKenna is fooling herself if she doesn’t think vouchers would enable the growth of private schools. It would be HUGE for us.

Heck, with a 7,000 dollar voucher, plus maybe a couple thousand from parents on top of that, we could effectively halve the price for all students and double our budget. We would undoubtedly grow. The demand is certainly there. I think McKenna does not realize just how cheap it is to do things in the private vs. public sector.