School Vouchers: It’s My Money, Right?
Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes
In Douglas County, we seem unable to leave the issue of school vouchers firmly in the rear view mirror where it belongs. Now that the Kids First candidates are the majority on the DCSD Board of Education (BoE), vouchers will almost certainly end up back on the table. The only question is when.
Why is there such an uproar around vouchers, and why is DougCo Collective so concerned about it? In 2011, the conservative BoE majority (known as the Reform Board) created a school voucher program. Legal challenges prevented it from moving forward. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the program was unconstitutional. An appeal to the US Supreme Court sent the decision back to the Colorado Supreme court for further review. Before that happened, the Reform majority was voted out and replaced with candidates who promised to end the program, which they did.
All the Kids First candidates stated during the 2021 campaign that they had no interest in resurrecting vouchers or anything resembling them. But in an abrupt about-face, Mike Peterson declared that “Anything is possible down the road,” when asked about vouchers in an interview with the Colorado Sun on Nov. 3, 2021, not even 24 hours after the polls closed. So, who are we to believe? Candidate Peterson or Director Peterson?
What Are School Vouchers, Anyway?
A school voucher is any method by which tax dollars appropriated for public education are distributed to private citizens. Advocates for school vouchers argue that parents should be allowed to choose how the tax dollars they pay towards education are spent. School vouchers are intended to be used to help pay for private school tuition and fees (including parochial schools). This cause is often championed under the banner of “school choice” and/or “parent choice.”
This sounds perfectly reasonable, right? After all, who among us hasn’t experienced some heartburn when looking at their W-2 and seeing just how much money they handed over to the government? Or thought about how nice it would be to have some of that cash back in their pocket? Or grumbled about government inefficiency and wasteful spending?
Wow! That Sounds Great!
The proposal in DCSD’s now-defunct voucher program was for families to receive 75 percent of their child’s Per Pupil Revenue (PPR) to be put towards private school tuition and fees. The PPR is the amount that the school district receives for each child. It is a combination of money from the state budget (state share) and property taxes collected by the county (local share).
The PPR for DCSD for the 2021-2022 fiscal year is $8,607. Seventy-five percent of that is $6,455. But is $6,455 really the amount of taxes from an average household in Douglas County that is appropriated for education? Let’s crunch the numbers and find out.
Let’s Set the Stage
This hypothetical scenario calculates how much an average household in Douglas County pays in taxes, and the portion of those taxes that is appropriated for education. That scenario is based on the following assumptions:
A “household” is comprised of four people: two adults and two dependent children
Average household gross income (before taxes) is $119,730
Annual sales taxes paid per household is $514 per person
Property tax liability based on a home with an assessed value of $450,000
Tax rates, deductions, and exemptions are based on 2021 amounts
Other factors such as 401(k) and IRA contributions, investment income, income from rental property, and child support (just to name a few) vary widely from person to person, so they have been excluded from this scenario.
Taxes
Taxes. We all pay them, and we all hate them. The only taxes included in this scenario are federal and state income taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes. The estimated tax liabilities for this hypothetical family of four are below.
Figure 1 Taxes Paid by Average Douglas County Household:
Figure 2 Total Taxes Paid:
Wait – I Paid How Much?!?! Tell Me Where to Get My Voucher!
This hypothetical family of four paid around $21,370 in taxes in 2021. You might be thinking that that’s an outrageous amount of money. You might consider it robbery or extortion. And perhaps it is. Whatever anyone’s opinions might be, we can probably all agree that $21,370 is a considerable amount of money. But how much of that will go to education? Remember, the idea behind school vouchers is allowing parents to choose how to use the tax dollars they paid that fund education. A few more calculations will bring the picture into sharper focus.
First, we need to know how much of each type of tax (federal, state, and property) is appropriated to education:
Education accounts for 5.38% of the federal budget.
The total budget for the state of Colorado for the 2021-2022 fiscal year is $34.1 billion, with $7.8 billion designated for education, or 22.87% of the budget.
Douglas County distributes 42.99% of the property taxes it collects to schools.
Using those values, we can determine how much of the total taxes paid will be used to fund education.
Figure 3 Taxes Spent on Education:
So, there you have it. Around $3,300 of the taxes paid in 2021 by an average family of four in Douglas County went towards education.
So, Is A Voucher Really “My Money?”
Of course, everyone’s tax bill is different, higher or lower than in this scenario. But census income averages, published tax rates, and tax estimation tools allow for digging a little deeper and getting a closer approximation of how much of your taxes are really spent on education. Which brings us back to the most prominent argument we hear from voucher supporters: parents should be allowed to decide how to spend the taxes they pay for education. But as illustrated above, the voucher amount far exceeds the actual amount of taxes paid by the average household in Douglas County.
It's important to reiterate that these estimates are based on the structure of the previous voucher program. The Kids First BoE directors have yet to make any mention of vouchers since being sworn into office in November. But given that they have strong ties to many of the Reform Board (and their campaign donors), it’s not unreasonable to assume that any new voucher program will be similar to the last one.
Figure 4 Voucher Amount vs Taxes Paid
If our hypothetical family of four is given vouchers for both of their children, they would end up receiving almost $10,000 more than the taxes they paid for education. In other words, $10,000 of free money from the government.
Wait a minute. Isn’t the purpose of vouchers to let parents decide how to spend the taxes that they paid? Why do supporters of voucher supporters never disclose that there’s a strong possibility that the amount of the voucher will greatly exceed the amount of the taxes paid? We’re not talking about a few hundred bucks here and there; we’re talking about thousands of dollars.
Also worth noting is that the most ardent supporters of school vouchers are quite frequently the same ones who have a word for getting free money from the government that they shout from the rooftops at every given opportunity. That word is “socialism.” But not a word is ever mentioned about the glaring discrepancy between the taxes paid and the money that would be distributed with the voucher.
Vouchers are not about “parent choice.” They are rooted in avarice and aim to divert taxpayer monies intended for public education to private institutions for their own benefit. Making the case for vouchers by tying it to the easy target of taxes – which everyone universally dislikes, regardless of income level or political affiliation – obfuscates the true objective of school vouchers, which is nothing more than a money-grab by greedy people looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the public school system.
When the next voucher program is introduced, it will be called something like “Choice Coupons,” or “Tuition Tokens,” or something else innocuous that doesn’t include the word “voucher.” But that’s what they’ll be, and no amount of wordsmithing will change that. Don’t fall for it.