AZ Talk: Are education tax credits a mistake?
AZ Talk brings you a cross-section of opinion from your fellow Arizonans, young and old, male and female, working class and white collar.
THIS WEEK: Did Arizona make a mistake when it created an education tax-credit program?
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Yes! Besides the legislator who wrote the bill getting a six-figure job as a tax-credit program administrator, the program stole money from public schools and widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. The goal of providing scholarships for poor kids forgot that kids whose parents work can’t drive them to the Valley’s high-end private schools that benefit from the tax-credit program. Neighborhood schools were once the backbone of Arizona’s public education system. Not anymore. And tax credits are stealing the future from the poor while comforting the cost of high tuition for the rich.
Bill Richardson
Retired Mesa police detective
Tempe
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Yes. Regardless of the original pitch by Arizona’s Republican legislators and governors that school tax credits will increase school choice and student outcomes, the facts are in and what has occurred instead is that tax credit monies have exacerbated a schism between students whose parents have money to contribute and those that do not. This system continues to widen the gap between students living in more demographically affluent neighborhoods and those that do not. Arizona’s politicians have established an educational system based on parental income and have assisted in the continued erosion of Arizona schools and the state’s national reputation.
Linda Abbott
Community activist
Gilbert
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No. The effect of these programs is to provide our taxpayers with a way to direct a portion of their state income-tax obligations. The school tax credit is the one which gets the most criticism. But the per student grant provided by the state to our school districts is not enough to cover all of the educational needs of our students. It is appropriate that we provided a way to permit parents and others to supplement these grants. While it can legitimately by argued that the well-to-do school districts benefit more than school districts with a less affluent population base, the state cannot, nor should it, create absolute equality among the districts. Likewise, it is a good idea to provide a way to encourage gifts to those others benefitted by the other tax credit programs. It is not a perfect system. But it is a pretty good system, and we should keep it.
Jerry Miles
Former mayor
Town of Fountain Hills
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No. I strongly support Arizona education tax credits. I tutor in a south Scottsdale elementary school where the volunteers annually use tax credits to sustain the program. Critics cry "elitism" when certain schools benefit more than others. Charter schools, falsely condemned as bastions for the wealthy, are public schools where parents chose to place their children without tuition payments. Parents use tax credits to control where supplemental funds are best used to educate their kids. Education is the finest gift we can give children in our community. Tax credits help recognize this goal.
Judith Kunkel
Community volunteer
Paradise Valley