Missouri’s Governor HAS signed HB349 the ESA / Voucher Bill.
From Missouri’s smallest rural communities to our state’s most populous urban centers, more than 90 percent of Missouri children attend traditional public schools. HB349 worked its way through the Missouri state General Assembly and threatens the viability of those schools and the promise of a quality public education that all of our children need to succeed and thrive.THIS BILL THREATENS ALL MISSOURI KIDS—NO MATTER WHERE THEY LIVE.They hurt both rural and urban kids by taking funding from traditional schools and directing it to private and privately managed charter schools. This bill is funded by taxpayers as tax credits . No increase in state resources is envisioned to support this dual system. That means public school kids will go without nurses, school counselors, librarians and needed supplies, as school funding is diverted to private or charter schools.If legislators want to pay for private schools or give more money to charters, they should find an alternative revenue stream to do it, instead of draining funding from Missouri’s public schools, which are the heart of their communities—large and small—across our state.WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS COSTLY PRIVATIZATION SCHEME AND WE WILL NOT SACRIFICE OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS AND OUR KIDS’ FUTURES TO THESE MISGUIDED PROPOSALS HB 349:Creates a backdoor voucher program, using tax credits to pay for students to attend private schools.While initially limited to students in cities with populations greater than 30,000, there is nothing to stop this scheme from future expansion into other small-town and rural districts.