NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {T} he school buses have now long revved up and are rolling, and so too is the prolonged Keystone State battle for education reform. It’s now in a political Fall Offensive phase, as the Pennsylvania legislature — squeezed by the dynamics in the Democratic Party, which has temporarily lost its razor-thin control of the House, and the hardball strategizing of the state’s pro-reform Republican leadership — must finalize a budget which will, or won’t, in the end include funding for Lifeline Scholarships. That’s the popular program abandoned this summer by its once-surprising political supporter, the veto-pen-wielding liberal Democrat, Governor Josh Shapiro.
Part of the drama is the balance of power. A special election takes place today to break the 101–101 deadlock between the parties. It was created in mid July, when progressive state representative Sara Innamorato resigned her strong-Democrat seat to focus on a forthcoming Allegheny County executive election.
If Democrats keep the seat, and thereby resume razor-thin control of the House (the Pennsylvania senate is GOP-controlled), it is expected that the majority leader, Matthew Bradford, a union activist, will continue his all-out assault on the Lifeline Scholarship Program. The program seeks to provide kids stuck in the state’s worst public schools necessary funding to afford them private alternatives. It is bitterly opposed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association, backed by the usual organized-union suspects.
After months of protracted vacation/recess — a neat trick for an allegedly full-time legislature — prompted by the Democrats’ political panic, the House will return next week to take up and complete the commonwealth’s multipart budget process. The popular education-reform proposal was supported by then-candidate Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor whose initial backing is now seen as less a conviction and more a move to forge “moderate” credentials. The first-term chief executive betrayed those credentials when, buckling to Big Labor demands, he formally line-item-vetoed the program’s funding in the adopted state budget bill in August. Despite his betrayal, the education-reform proposal remains viable as part of the upcoming budget process.
Minus the intransigence of Bradford, and Shaprio’s broken word, the budget would have been completed. Thousands of kids would have been provided hellhole escapes and educational opportunity; the scholarships, officially called the “Pennsylvania Award for Student Success” (PASS) are better known as “Lifeline” for an obvious reason. And the governor, said to be an aspiring president, would be looking at a far-rosier 2028 scenario.
Senate Republicans, the reform’s champions (across the aisle, Philadelphia state senator Tony Williams has proven that rare, brave advocate) — are using the budget process’s “Fiscal Code” (required to authorize new or expanded programs that were funded in the general-appropriations bill) to give Lifeline a . . . lifeline. As August ended, and as the House vacationed on (earning the mockery of even the quite-liberal Philadelphia Inquirer), the upper chamber — led by President Pro Tempore Kim Ward — met. It approved, 28-19, the fiscal-code implementation that includes the authorization of the PASS program, as well as scholarship funding, plus $150 million in additional new funding to expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit program that allows businesses tax credits for expanding educational choice.
If, as earlier polls have shown, the public has had enough of the Democrats’ political slow-walking, and Shapiro’s treachery — as well as his own failure to show leadership through the budget process — the forthcoming battle to save Pennsylvania’s trapped students through Lifeline Scholarships may prove a defeat for Bradford and his House allies. It may also force the governor into a no-win flop on his flip (itself a no-win).
Some ed-reform champions are hoping that a dramatic act might occur to shock Keystone State politics. They suggest that the lightning that struck in Georgia in July — when state representative Mesha Mainor gained national attention by abandoning the Democrats in part because of the party’s opposition to school vouchers — might strike twice, albeit in September in Pennsylvania. Another black Democratic legislator, Amen Brown, has stood up in the Pennsylvania House for education reform and PASS in solitary partisan defiance of his party’s legislative leadership.
Ward has high praise for Brown. The Philadelphia Democrat “is proving that education isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue by bravely standing up to his party and standing for the low-income children trapped in failing schools,” she said. “I know there are other lawmakers who agree with Rep. Brown and hopefully they too will courageously take the side of the children by voting to remove the barriers that trap them in failing schools.”
Brown supported Lifeline Scholarships in a previous legislative session, but then asked to change his “yes” vote because, according to Broad+Liberty, “he faced retribution from party leadership for doing so and had to publicly retract his support or he’d lose staff and committee assignments.” But come 2023, Brown again voted for PASS, saying Lifeline Scholarships “give our parents another option and leave it in their hands.” There has been no retraction — maybe because, with the House balance of power uncertain, the timing to kneecap was off.
Come Tuesday night, it might be on. Might Brown be more than defiant this time? Could he . . . cross the aisle?
The odds would be pretty long. As Jeff Yass — the billionaire Pennsylvanian who is a massive supporter of education reform — laid out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, many a reform Dem has done a 180, and stuck:
That is why the teachers unions have squashed support for school choice formerly expressed by Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who previously supported educational choice vouchers, and Sen. Cory Booker, a former board member of the Alliance for School Choice. Their political bullying turns a lawmaker who could be a modern-day Frederick Douglass into a modern-day George Wallace.
But sometimes the politics of partisan retribution prove too . . . retributive. They did for Mesha Mainor in Georgia. And if they do in Pennsylvania, if the opinion of Kim Ward is any indication, there is sure to be an Amen Corner in the GOP for Representative Brown. His courage here would make him a friend of desperately needed reform, and, more so, a friend of those children consigned to the fate of broken and dangerous schools, awaiting their Frederick Douglass.