School Choice Bill Establishing Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Defeated in Legislature

The State Legislature has rejected a bill that would have expanded school choice in Maine by creating an Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.

The vote fell strictly along partisan lines in the Senate, and nearly along partisan lines in the House. The only Republican to vote against the bill was Rep. Abden Simmons (R-Waldoboro), who just flipped District 45’s seat from blue to red in a special election held last Tuesday.

After publication of this story, Rep. Simmons stated that his vote was cast in error. Although he initially attempted to have his vote changed, he ultimately decided not to pursue this since asking for reconsideration would not have affected the outcome for the bill.

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, also known as Education Savings Accounts, are a form of school choice that allow parents who choose withdraw their children from the public school system to receive a voucher that can then be used to cover the student’s educational expenses, including the cost of private school tuition.

Sen. Jim Libby (R-Cumberland), the bill’s sponsor, said LD 1798 would help inject some much needed competition into Maine’s education system.

“The idea behind this bill is that we cannot improve Maine schools until we subject them to competition. Providing parents with school choice will quickly hone schools and make them far more customer friendly,” he said.

Eileen King, Deputy Director of the Maine School Board Association, testified in opposition to the bill.

“Private school vouchers do not offer real choice. Vouchers give a choice to private schools, rather than parents and students,” she said. “Voucher programs allow private schools to accept taxpayer dollars but still reject students with vouchers for a variety of reasons, ranging from disability to ability to pay.”

President of the Maine Education Association Grace Leavitt raised similar concerns.

“Voucher programs may help more affluent families provide a private school education using public dollars,” she said. “But for every other stakeholder and constituency, the overall result of voucher programs has meant more inequity, more resource challenges for public schools, and more questions regarding the provision of special education services to students, among other negative outcomes.”

Courtney Belonan of the Maine Department of Education stated in her testimony that Empowerment Scholarship Accounts would limit “parental and community input and oversight of education.”

“Because private schools do not have a school board, parents and communities do not have the same amount of access or control over the decisions relating to curriculum or budget initiatives. Private schools are not required to participate in the State accountability system, nor are they required to follow the Maine Learning Results. Further, private schools do not provide the same amount of transparency in their financial disclosures,” she said.

In a statement to the Maine Wire, Sen. Libby further explained the rationale behind LD 1798.

“For years, we had no competition for students for the large majority of Maine towns. Yet some towns – Arundel comes to mind – enjoy school choice,” he said. “There is no fairness in that aspect of the Maine system.”

Here, Libby refers to Maine’s Town Tuitioning program, a longstanding policy in Maine that allows students living in districts that do not maintain their own public school system to attend the public or private school of their family’s choosing. The student’s home district directly pays the receiving school “the cost of transportation and tuition, up to the State-determined, average per-student cost.”

“For the rest of us, if we send our student to a private school following a poor experience in an underperforming public school, the taxpayer essentially forfeits their per-pupil tax contribution,” he said. “It’s like sending another person’s child to a school whose results you found to be unsatisfactory. Why would anyone choose to do that?”

Another benefit of expanding school choice that Libby identified was greater academic specialization.

“School choice incentivizes schools to develop their brand and hone their strengths. Whether it is biology, music, theater, or mathematics, a school with faculty strengths draws students whose goals align with the featured curricular component,” he said.

Libby also noted that “overall school performance in Maine is falling faster than the national average in a number of areas.”

“Of particular concern is 4th grade mathematics here in Maine. We talk a lot about ‘STEM’ and ‘STEAM,’ but we need to deliver much better results,” he said.

“The fact that we now fall below the national average in many learning categories is evidence that innovation is necessary,” he said. “Choice will enable innovation.”

Nationwide, school choice enjoys substantial bipartisan support among members of the public.

In RealClear Opinion Research poll from 2022, 68 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans, and 67% of Independents expressed support for school choice measures that would allow parents to “use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.”

[RELATED: Maine Policy Institute – Arizona’s Expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts a Model for Maine and Nation]

Disclaimer: The Maine Wire is a project of the Maine Policy Institute.