A proposal that would provide a tax credit for businesses to donate to nonpublic schools and support teacher education has stirred opposition from the teachers union, school boards and superintendents from around the state.
The Maryland State Teachers Association “jumped on me,” said Del. James Proctor, D-Prince George?s, the lead sponsor of 60 delegates co-sponsoring the measure. Proctor, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was especially surprised since he had spent 32 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the Prince George?s County schools.
“You want me to teach some children, but not all children?” Proctor said he asked them. “I?m not doing that. Get off my back.”
The bill allows businesses to take 75 percent of their donations for nonpublic schools as a state tax credit on their income tax, rather than just as a deduction as currently allowed. The state could give as much as $25 million in such credits in any one year.
The expense of the bill is a problem, Proctor admitted, but he doesn?t think that it will cost the state anywhere near that much in its first year. He said he still doesn?t have the 14 votes needed to get the bill out of committee.
The same bill in the Senate is sponsored by Sen. James Ed DeGrange and a majority of the Budget and Taxation Committee, which held a hearing on it two weeks ago.
The public school superintendents complained that any money in this bill “needs to go to public schools,” a point made by most of the other opponents of the bill, including the Maryland Association of School Boards, and school boards from Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. The Harford County Board of Education noted that, unlike public schools, “private schools have no direct accountability.”
Other opponents include the American Civil Liberties Union, which called the measure “vouchers by the back door.”
Bill supporters including hundreds of school children who had a snow day, rallied for the bill in Annapolis on Wednesday. David Castle, of the Annapolis Area Christian School, pointed out that 136,000 K-12 students in Maryland attend nonpublic schools, saving the state $1.3 billion dollars a year in school costs.
Mary Ellen Russell, of the Maryland Catholic Conference, said “We all recognize the fiscal constraints that state is facing,” but especially with the influx of new military jobs, “we?re going to need every seat and desk we can get.”
