Gov. Terry McAuliffe
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed a trio of school choice bills this week —including one establishing education savings accounts (ESAs) for students with special needs.
The vetoes came just a month after McAuliffe vetoed a pair of bills allowing home education students to participate in public school sports.
The education savings accounts could have been the sixth such program nationwide, the first approved by a Democratic governor, and the second private school choice program in Virginia. (The commonwealth offers a small tax credit scholarship program for low-to moderate-income students. That program launched in 2013.)
The governor provided three reasons for the veto of the education savings account legislation (House Bill 389).
First, he argued the program would violate the state's constitution, which restricts public funding of schools that aren't "exclusively controlled by the State or some political subdivision thereof" and bans funding of "sectarian" institutions. It's not exactly clear how those prohibitions might affect ESAs, which are controlled by parents and can be spent on a host of educational expenses such as therapies, tutors and textbooks, as well as tuition at sectarian and nonsectarian private education or even classes and extracurricular activities at a local public school.
Second, McAuliffe argued the creation of ESAs "diverts much-needed resources away from public schools," which would still have to pay for teachers, buses and other expenses. This assumes that all costs in education are fixed. As a banker, businessman and investor, McAuliffe should know that schools have a mix of fixed and variable costs.
Finally, the governor claimed the scholarship funding would "codify inequity" because the scholarship amount would have varied from district to district. ESA funding was based on the state's already codified school district funding scheme. If funding equity were the main concern, the governor could encourage lawmakers to fund ESAs based on a statewide average.
The other bills McAuliffe vetoed would have created a statewide public virtual school and allowed students to transfer out of the 12 lowest-performing public schools identified by the state's department of education.
