Military sacrifices should not include sacrificing quality education
The Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program, which began in 2018, allows businesses and individuals to receive tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school scholarships. This makes for an innovative alternative to public education.
It allows families "to help their children find success at a best-fit school" regardless of neighborhood, income or learning style, according to Empower Illinois. Giving families options to enroll their kids in learning environments that may not be available to them at their local public schools, means that access to quality education does not have to be conditional on where your family lives.
But, the program is on the verge of being eliminated due to partisan politics unless Illinois legislators act now to make it permanent.
As a recipient family of the tax credit scholarship program, I can attest to the benefits it has provided us as a military family. Many military families choose to live in base housing, which is often not zoned for the best school districts. When my husband got stationed at Great Lakes in 2021, we were fortunate to live off base, and we decided to send our daughter to our local primary school. Based on the recommendations of our real estate professional and conversations with school administrators, we felt comfortable sending her there, but that changed over the course of the year.
During her enrollment, the teachers were unaware of instances of bullying and inappropriate content being spread among the students. These events were traumatizing for our daughter. As a parent, it was clear she was not getting the social, emotional or academic support she needed from her school. So we began to look into private schools. The principal at one of those schools introduced us to the tax credit scholarship program, and we will be forever grateful that he did.
The tax credit scholarship program changed our lives. Not only has her private school been a great fit for our daughter with an academically rigorous curriculum and a structured environment where she can best learn, but it also allowed our family to truly feel valued as part of a community - one which is highly supportive of the military where we have made lasting friendships.
There are many sacrifices we make as a military family, but one thing we will not sacrifice is our daughters' education. Programs like Invest in Kids are essential to military families so that they can send their children to schools that are not in their assigned district, but better fit their academic needs.
Many military kids go through difficult academic transitions as curriculums vary as they move from one state to the next, and while we are rarely given a choice as to where we move, we should have the ability to choose where we send our children to school, just as some leaders of our state and heads of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Education Association do.
But the scholarship program is set to sunset this year, and it is unclear whether Illinois lawmakers will make the program permanent with a new bill, House Bill 4105, sponsored by 24 Republicans. There is not a single Democratic sponsor to this bill for one simple reason: fear of retaliation by the teachers unions.
The Chicago Teachers Union and others in the state have lobbied to kill the program. By pressuring Democrats to not let HB 4105 get to the House floor, the unions are using a political quid pro quo tactic - you vote in favor of the bill, you will be ousted in the next election.
Instead of caring about families receiving the best educational outcomes for their kids, our representatives would rather play partisan politics and cater to the unions.
Our kids deserve better. In the fall veto session, legislators are debating if the education of nearly 10,000 kids like ours is worth investing in. I encourage these lawmakers to stand up to the mounting political pressure of teachers unions.
Stand up for your military families. Getting a good education should not be about which district you are in or how much money your family makes. That is the entire basis of the Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program. If you take that away, you not only take away choice from thousands of families, but you also squash their hopes of having the best learning environment for their kids' academic success.
It is hard to believe that for families who sacrifice so much for our country, politicians are turning their backs on our children's education. In today's divisive climate, I believe this is an issue that can unite us all and simply allowing HB 4105 to be heard at the veto session is one step toward uniting a divided state.
• April Colette, of Gurnee, is a geographer and mother of two.