Radio Recap – BREAKING: School Choice Now Act Introduced

Brand new legislation has been proposed in the U.S. Senate to provide vouchers to families during the pandemic so they can choose the right school or education program for their child.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed the School Choice Now Act legislation introduced by Senators Tim Scott and Lamar Alexander.

As you know, we have been taking on major education initiatives. Over one thousand families from over twenty-five states – probably closer to thirty now – have contacted the ACLJ. They’ve reached out to us due to educational hardships students in public schools will be facing as a result of the plans or in some cases, lack of plans being announced by their school districts.

We’re dealing with those on a case by case basis, individually, to analyze the hardships each student may be facing. Every family could be impacted differently, whether it’s a special needs child, or a virtual learning situation where they lack the necessary Internet access, or the loss of essential food programming. Working parents are faced with childcare issues, and that includes married couples where both work, and especially single parents. These are just some of the issues families are forced to deal with right now.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have put forth legislation to essentially offer pandemic vouchers. This means there’s now federal action for us to support and for our government affairs team to get behind. These are vouchers specifically for use during the pandemic so that parents will have the choice of where to send their students, or provide homeschool funding if they need that, or to bring in tutors to their home if they have to do that.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett explained:

This is extremely encouraging news from the federal government. Honestly, it is exactly what we have been asking them to do in this proposal. It’s called the School Choice Now Act. It’s put forward by Senator Scott, and Chairman Lamar Alexander as well. There’s a couple of components to this, but the most important one in my mind is what is called emergency education freedom grants. These are dollars that would flow through the coronavirus stimulus funding, which is being worked on right now, to states to provide to scholarship granting entities. What does that mean? It means that parents would be eligible to receive these funds from the federal government, through their state entities, to choose the schooling for their children of their choice. It could include homeschool. It could include private schools. It could include charter schools. The total dollar amounts in this act would be ten percent of whatever is allocated toward education going forward.

The full broadcast is complete with much more analysis by our team of the new school choice legislation proposed by Senator Scott and Senator Alexander, as well as a discussion on school choice with Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation Corey DeAngelis.

Watch the full broadcast below.