Key Findings

1. HB 1215 would provide families a $7000 state scholarship to educate their children.

2. These scholarships could be used by parents to buy textbooks, pay the cost of private tutoring, and tuition and fees at private schools.

3. These scholarships would give families access to education choice, and to a quality education for their children.

4. These scholarships would help families hurt most by the COVID school closures.

5. These scholarships would liberate families from having to send their children to failing schools, and end the system of reserving the best education programs for the wealthy.

6. These scholarships would save the state of Washington about $5,000 on average per student, and $15,000 on average for every special needs student.

7. Fiscal analyses show that state finances would be improved by programs similar to HB 1215’s Education Scholarship program, and that these programs deliver more resources to students who remain within the public school system.

Introduction

Representatives Vicki Kraft (R-Vancouver) and Jesse Young (R-Gig Harbor) have introduced HB 1215, a bill to “provide parents and their children with more choices for a quality K-12 education through the K-12 Education Scholarship program.”

The bill would allow parents to apply to the Education Scholarship Council for a $7,000 scholarship for the education of their children. Parents would be allowed to use these scholarships to buy textbooks, pay the cost of private tutoring, curricula, and tuition and fees at a private K-12 school in Washington state.

The bill would provide scholarships for 130,000 students. Twenty-five percent of the funds would go to children in foster care, homeless children, children with special needs, and low-income children. Remaining scholarships would be geographically distributed on an equal basis to students across the state, without regard to race, color, economic status, or sex.

Read the full Legislative Memo here.