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Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Oklahoma agencies publish private school tax credit recipients under transparency law
Evie Jenney teaches theology at Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Oklahoma City on May 20, 2024. The school is one of more than 200 participating in the Parental Choice Tax Credit. (Photo by Ted Streuli/Oklahoma Watch) Oklahoma officials have released the names of the thousands of taxpayers who received the new Parental Choice Tax Credit for tuition and expenses at private schools. After repeated requests by Oklahoma Watch dating back to December, the Oklahoma Tax Commission sent the tax credit recipient data to the state's open data website. The information is limited to just the name of the taxpayer and the amount of private school tax credits they received in 2024. It doesn't include school or student information. The tax credit program provides up to $7,500 annually per child for private school expenses. Lawmakers capped the overall cost of the program at $150 million in tax year 2024, but it rises to $250 million in tax year 2026. If they qualified, most taxpayers received half the credit early in the year and the other half later in the year. The total credit amount doesn't show how many children in a family received the private school tuition tax credit. The top recipient received more than $24,000 in tax credits in the second half of 2024, according to the data. The data is posted at the state's open data website, which is maintained by the Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Oklahoma Watch requested private school tax credit data in December from the Tax Commission under the Oklahoma Open Records Act and the Oklahoma Taxpayer Transparency Act. Though most taxpayer data is confidential, recipients of tax credits are an exception under the taxpayer transparency law. Lawmakers passed that law in 2010 to address budget planning issues caused by transferable tax credits. Initially, the Tax Commission referred Oklahoma Watch's request to the state's open data website, which lacked the relevant data. Commission attorneys later determined the data could only be released through the Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Although the Tax Commission administers the program, it would not release the data directly. After a delay and agency miscommunication, the data was finally posted on the state's open data site on April 29. The Tax Commission last week released its latest snapshot of the recipients of the Parental Choice Tax Credit. It showed just 2,963 of the 36,921 students approved for the tax credit so far this year were enrolled in public school the previous semester. In setting up the program, lawmakers gave priority consideration to families making an adjusted gross income of less than $75,000. Proponents frequently referred to that group as 'low income,' even though the state's median household income is $63,600. About 2,700, or 9%, of the students in the program came from families that qualify for income-based public assistance programs, according to the data snapshot. More than 27,000 students receiving the private school tax credit – almost 75% – came from families with household incomes above $75,000, according to the latest Tax Commission data. Shiloh Kantz, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, said at a minimum, lawmakers should put additional accountability measures into the Parental Choice Tax Credit program. She said it would be helpful to know which private school the student attended and the local public school district. There should also be regular audits of the credit and the percentage of audits where errors were found. Those types of safeguards are built into state and federal programs like the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid that benefit low-income families. 'We got told this program will uplift educational outcomes, that it offers families educational choice and opportunity through that choice,' Kantz said. 'But really it just rewards those people who can already afford private education, and it just leaves our public school students further behind, especially in a state where one in five kids live in poverty.' Kantz said few private schools are adding capacity to take additional students. Meanwhile, some schools have increased tuition since the tax credit was implemented. 'So it is not about having parental choice,' Kantz said. 'It is about checking a box as a political red state to say, 'We did the thing.' But it's not helping working Oklahomans.' The Legislature considered several changes to the program this year. Lawmakers didn't act on Senate Bill 229, by Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, this session. It would have eliminated the $250 million annual cap on the private school tax credit, a change Gov. Kevin Stitt called for at a rally at the Capitol in March celebrating the private school tax credit program. SB 684, by Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, could come up for a vote in the House this week. It mostly deals with accreditation organizations for private schools participating in the Parental Choice Tax Credit. But it also prioritizes existing recipients if they still meet income eligibility requirements. This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oklahoma Supreme Court pauses Ryan Walters' attempt to buy Bibles, Bible-infused curriculum
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has halted so-called 'request for proposals' for Bibles and Bible curriculum for Oklahoma classrooms, but has left open the question about the constitutionality of state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters' Bible-teaching mandate for state schools. The order, signed by Chief Justice Dustin Rowe, was issued Monday. In the past two weeks, there have been a flurry of filings in the lawsuit, which was originally filed Oct. 17. The lawsuit asked the court to halt Walters' mandate, issued in June, and bar Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education from spending $3 million in state money on Bibles. The agency is attempting a second 'request for proposals' seeking bidders to provide Bibles for classrooms. The original request was written in such a way that very few versions of the Bible — namely one endorsed by President Donald Trump — appear to meet all the standards specified. The state Office of Management and Enterprise Services, a defendant in the lawsuit, had asked the court to order it to stop working on processing two request for proposals, or RFPs, from the Oklahoma State Department of Education — one for the Bibles, a second for Bible-infused curriculum for elementary classrooms — until the court issues a final decision. The agency had told the plaintiffs it was legally obligated to proceed with processing the RFPs until a court directive ordering it to do otherwise is issued. Rowe's decision said a ruling on the plaintiff's request to enjoin Walters from 'taking any other action to implement or enforce the Bible Education Mandate is deferred to the decisional stage.' Walters' desire was to spend $3 million in money from the fiscal year that ended in June for Bibles — the current RFP — and $3 million from the current fiscal year for more Bibles. The Oklahoma Senate's education budget subcommittee didn't include the $3 million Walters requested for the current fiscal year in its recommendation for this year's state Education Department budget. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma Supreme Court pauses Ryan Walters' attempt to buy Bibles
