Ohio lawmakers may have saved the best for the end of a remarkable year for parenting choice programs. School Choice Ohio has reduced all private school provisions here but briefly, Ohio lawmakers created an after-school enrichment education savings account. They also created a new tax credit for private choice scholarships and expanded the funding and eligibility of existing voucher programs.
Ohio’s new budget also created a small tax credit for home schooling expenses, removed a statewide cap on the number of EdChoice scholarships, and phased out public attendance requirements. prerequisites for the EdChoice scholarships. In addition, charter schools, which were limited to certain distressed districts, can now operate in any district in Ohio.
Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio and West Virginia enacted school selection reforms which, in any “normal” legislative season, would likely have been the biggest move of the year. New states like Missouri and Kentucky passed the first programs in their states. Pennsylvania lawmakers raised their state’s tax credit limit by $ 40 million. Legislators in Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada and Oklahoma all have improved existing programs or created new ones.
The 2020-21 school year also saw a sharp increase in enrollment in charter schools, a large to gigantic increase in home schooling (estimates vary) and the emergence of a micro-schooling sector.
However, not everyone seems to get the message:
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Centers for Disease Control clears COVID-19 vaccines for 12-year-olds and older. While vaccinating children against COVID-19 would help with herd immunity, it should be remembered that children are more likely to die from normal flu than from COVID, and school staff were among the first groups to have access to COVID-19 vaccines. The mere suggestion of disrupting another school year for such fallacious reasons is a vulgar demonstration of right.