The General Assembly voted to expand the state’s private school tax credit program Thursday night after protracted back-and-forth between supporters and opponents of the program.
Collectively, donors to student scholarship organizations would be able to claim $58 million in state tax credits. SSOs pass the money they raise on to private schools, and those private schools award the money to students making the switch from public to private school.
Donors claimed $51.5 million in tax credits in 2012.
Supporters of the program wanted to expand the tax credit pool to $65 million. Others, however, said the program has been abused and that its expansion could not be justified at a time when public school districts are struggling to cope with years of state budget cuts.
In the end, the program — which has the strong support of Gov. Nathan Deal — was not expanded as much as backers had hoped, nor was it shrunk to $50 million, as opponents wanted.
In addition to expanding the pool of tax credits, the legislation would require that private school students benefiting from the program must first have been public school students for at least six weeks. There are exceptions for students who were home schooled for at least a year, for students who can demonstrate that they’ve been verbally or physically abused in their traditional public school, and for those whose traditional public school is a low-achieving school.
