Dear Governor Shapiro,

We, the undersigned, greatly appreciate your ongoing commitment to public education. You have been steadfast in providing Adequacy funding for the state's neediest schools; you've responded to parents who have expressed concerns about the crush of technology our students face by implementing new recess guidelines and social media education; and you have correctly pursued fiscal accountability in the state's cyber charter school sector. It is these initiatives and others that form the foundation of your administration's support for our public schools, and establish your record as a champion of public education.

We're writing to ask you to continue that strong support by not participating in Trump’s private school voucher program.

In spite of what you may be hearing, this program would not provide any direct support for Pennsylvania's public schools.

This is a voucher program that is specifically designed to pay for private school tuition and other goods and services for individual students. While in narrow circumstances public school students may receive voucher funding to pay for fee-based services, the structure of this program is designed to expand privatized education and funnel tax dollars into intermediary organizations, not strengthen public schools.

Further, the program’s structure ensures that a staggering 10% of the overall funding will not be used to pay for educational opportunities for students at all. Instead, these tax dollars will be siphoned into private intermediary organizations that distribute the funding to students.

Previewed guidance from June 9th indicates that states will not be allowed to impose substantive requirements on this program that are more restrictive than what is in the original legislation.

This means that Pennsylvania would not be able to target voucher resources to students with the greatest needs or restrict family income limits to match those used by the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs, which cap family income eligibility at no more than $116,055 plus $20,428 for each dependent member of the household.

Instead, Trump vouchers would be nearly universal. They would not be a lifeline for poor families seeking better opportunities for their children. With family income limits ranging from $204,000 in Forest County to $368,100 in Philadelphia and the collar counties, these dollars would be a trough of public funding available to pay for the private school tuition of all but the wealthiest families in the commonwealth.

Trump vouchers would fuel discrimination against students. Pennsylvania would not be able to prohibit federal voucher dollars from funding private and religious schools that discriminate against their students or employees because of their disability, religion, academics, LGBTQ+ status, pregnancy or abortion, and more.

And while Pennsylvania taxpayers would be on the hook to pay the unknown and substantial costs required to administer the program, the commonwealth would have little to no authority to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse of funding in the program.

When Governor Tina Kotek opted Oregon out of the program, she stated, “At this point, I simply cannot trust that any education policy coming from Trump’s White House is in the best interest of Oregon’s kids and our public education system.”

The same can be said for Pennsylvania kids and our public education system.

We respectfully ask you to decline to opt into Trump’s private school voucher program.