Up to 1,000 ineligible SC students booted from voucher program, report finds

Yahoo

03-03-2025

According to the S.C. Education Oversight Committee, up to 1,000 students enrolled in the K-12 scholarship program were deemed ineligible after parents received their first payment. (Stock photo by FG Trade via Getty Images)
COLUMBIA — As many as 1,000 K-12 students may have received taxpayer-supported scholarship money for school-related expenses before being found ineligible for the program, a state oversight agency found.
Between 868 and 1,000 students were removed from the state's voucher program after $1,500 was deposited in their parents' accounts last July, according to estimates the Education Oversight Committee provided to the SC Daily Gazette.
That was the first of four equal installments for the program's inaugural year.
The state House passed a bill Wednesday meant to revive payments for private K-12 tuition, which the state Supreme Court halted last September when it declared part of the 2023 law unconstitutional.
The Senate, which passed its own plan last month, will need to decide whether to accept the House's changes and send the bill on to Gov. Henry McMaster's desk or insist on its version. That would send negotiations to a House-Senate panel to try to agree on a compromise.
SC House passes bill to revive K-12 vouchers. The bulk of this year's money will go unused.
This first year of the program was limited to 5,000 Medicaid-eligible students who had to transfer from their local public school to a private school or to a different school district. The exception to the transfer rule were students entering kindergarten. The law specifies the money can't be used for homeschooling.
Nearly 8,000 students applied, but the Department of Education denied all but 2,880. Late applications, parents making too much money to qualify, and students being too old or too young were some of the reasons the department provided for denying applications.
Of those who were accepted, 1,845 students had spent at least a portion of their allotment by mid-January, collectively totaling $3.1 million, according to data the department provided to the Gazette on Wednesday. That accounted for less than half of the $6.6 million the department had distributed by then. The third installment of $1,500 was due to families by Jan. 31.
On Friday, the department said some parents didn't spend any of their allotment while their children were actively enrolled in the program, so the total number of accounts was greater than 1,845. It declined to say how many.
The agency also declined to say how many students were found ineligible after payments went out, saying that information will be provided in a report at the end of the school year.
As per state law, the first payment went to families before the beginning of the school year.
Department officials checked in 45 days later to verify that students had transferred schools as required. The department then checks where enrollees are attending school before sending their quarterly installment, spokesman Jason Raven said in an email Friday. He noted the program's first enrollment check at 45 days aligns with the first student count in public schools, which verifies per-pupil state and federal funding.
According to the agency, parents had to sign statements that they understood the rules of the program and went through training on how their children would remain eligible for payments.
However, many parents said in a survey conducted in October by the Education Oversight Committee that they didn't know their children had to transfer schools to be eligible for the money. Some thought they could stay in their home public school and use the money for the program's allowed expenses other than tuition, such as tutoring and computers, according to the independent education agency.
'After an application was submitted, reviewed and accepted, months later we get a response that my child technically wasn't eligible and that his account was deactivated,' wrote one of the 243 parents who responded.
That likely made parents more frustrated than not getting the money in the first place, the oversight agency said in a report presented to a subcommittee of its board in January.
Part of the problem probably came down to first-year kinks, the report said.
'The next year of implementation will likely bring improvements made from lessons learned and experience implementing the program,' the report reads.
Some parents with accounts that received money told the Education Oversight Committee their children were homeschooled. Other students were already attending a private school last year. One student was attending a school in a different state. Another was using the money for college, according to the responses. Those students should have been disqualified from ever enrolling.
That suggests the department was not paying close attention to where the money was going, said Sherry Easy, president of the South Carolina Education Association.
'Our concern is this is the first of many unauthorized spendings that will happen,' East said.
Once the funds were distributed, the state had little way to be sure parents were spending the money appropriately, the oversight committee's report found.
For example, several parents responding to the survey said they had used the money to homeschool their child, despite the law saying that's illegal.
The agreement parents had to sign last year included a pledge to not homeschool their child. If the department discovers a parent violated the agreement, the state will deactivate their account. The student can no longer be in the program, Raven said in a statement.
'In the statute, it says no, you may not use this for homeschool,' Jenny May, a researcher for the oversight agency, told its academic standards subcommittee. 'However, you can purchase curriculum, examinations, things of that nature, and there's not currently an existing oversight to see if you are homeschooling.'
Several parents said that was what they did with the money, according to the report.
The money 'has made it possible for me to home educate my children,' one parent wrote.
Raven, the education spokesman, said the state did not approve any homeschooling options for scholarship money.
Legislators banned homeschooling as allowable uses of the money because that's what homeschooling parents said they wanted.
Last year, the House considered lifting the ban on homeschooling as part of a bill expanding the scholarship program. But as the bill advanced through the House committee process, a group of homeschooling parents fought back. They equated getting state aid with the state being able to tell them what to do, including on testing requirements. (That bill passed the House but never got a vote in the Senate.)
Bothe the House and Senate versions of legislation that aims to reinstate private K-12 tuition payments would maintain the ban on homeschooling.
But some of the curriculum approved in the online portal for parents to buy is advertised for use in homeschooling.
Under the law, parents would be able to use the money to buy the lesson plans in order to supplement their schooling elsewhere, but no one seems to be making sure that's the case, said May, the oversight agency's researcher.
The South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools fielded calls from some of its 1,300 members who were frustrated and upset over not being able to use the money, said Katina Prescott, the association's administrative director. Many don't understand how the money is meant to be used, she said.
'There is a lot of confusion about this,' Prescott said. 'A lot of people need help and support but also want to be legally homeschooling.'
Raven said parents may be using the term homeschooling loosely. Maybe their children were taking virtual classes, and they attend with a computer from home, he said.
Palmetto Promise Institute, a conservative think tank that's advocated for the program for years, didn't see anything wrong with parents using the money to educate their children at home.
They may be sending their child to a school part-time, while completing their education with online classes and curriculum purchased through the program. That wouldn't officially count as homeschooling under state law, according to the think tank that helped write the 2023 law.
'We don't see why a parent could not use some of the qualifying expenses to craft an educational program for their child that would be conducted primarily at home,' the institute said in a statement.
As the program goes into its second year, the state needs better oversight of where the money is going, said Rep. Terry Alexander, a member of the subcommittee that reviewed the report.
'If we're giving out that money, we need to know how it's being spent,' the Florence Democrat said.