2 weeks Ago By Rob Port
MINOT — On Wednesday, Gov. Kelly Armstrong vetoed House Bill 1540, legislation that opponents of school choice policies derisively call a "voucher bill." Armstrong's reasoning for vetoing the bill, as he explained on the Plain Talk podcast shortly after he announced his decision, is that it doesn't do enough good for enough people.
HB1540 made millions of dollars available for parents who choose private schools, and nobody else. There were no funds available for home-schoolers, and no accounts available to help families with children in public school pay for things such as tutoring or educational camps. It was a straight transfer of wealth from the pockets of taxpayers to our state's mostly religious private schools, which serve only a fraction of our state's students who happen to live in communities where a private school is even available.
In his veto message, Armstrong urged lawmakers to support Senate Bill 2400 instead, which would have created education savings accounts for every student — in public schools, private schools and the homeschooled — where funds would be available to further their educations. I'm using the past tense because that bill came up in the House on Thursday, April 24, and got shot down by a lopsided margin. A total of 78 representatives voted against the bill, with just 14 voting for it.
Barring some unlikely turn of events, the debate over school choice is likely dead for this legislative session, and that's a shame. Our state had a real opportunity to find some common ground between private schools, public schools and home schooling advocates, but because of the greed of the private school proponents, we're getting nothing. This is terribly shortsighted.
SB2400 was far from perfect legislation, but had the House approved it Thursday, it would have been sent to the Appropriations Committee, where further amendments could have been made to create something that would appeal to people who live in cities, and in the country; who teach their kids at home, or send them to a public school, or have them enrolled in a private institution. To illustrate how shortsighted the private school advocates have become, consider this social media post from Friar Jadyn Nelson, the president of Bishop Ryan Catholic School in Minot. In a lengthy, whinging post, Nelson chose to interpret Armstrong's veto of HB1540, which would have represented a financial windfall for Nelson's school, as motivated by anti-Christian sentiment.
"How many public school parents realize that ND United and the rest of the public school lobby are trying to kill a bill that would benefit parents of public school children?" he asked, referring to the public worker and teacher union. "Have they told you how the vast majority of the money in SB 2400 is for parents of students in public schools?" What Nelson overlooks is that public schools would have received the majority of the funding under SB2400 because it was designed to benefit all North Dakota students. Most of those students currently attend public schools.
Nelson, in so far as he's representative of other private school interests upset at this turn of events in Bismarck, wants to play at being persecuted, but there's a simpler answer, which is that they asked for too much while giving too little. What private school advocates seem to forget is that they are the minority asking for a heaping helping of taxpayer subsidies, paid for by the majority. To win at that game, you're going to have to compromise.
You have to give something to get something. A bill making an equal amount of money available for every student in North Dakota in an education savings account —money that could be used for education costs, including private school tuition — could have passed this legislature and been signed into law by Armstrong. But to keep the expenses on a bill like that under control, it would have to limit the funds each student gets.
Once established, the program could be modified and expanded in subsequent sessions. That wasn't good enough for the private schools. They wanted more.
They let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and now they'll get nothing..
