By Annissa Essaibi George
Special to the Reporter
As a former Boston Public Schools (BPS) teacher, parent of four public school graduates, former chair of the Boston City Council Education Committee, and a non-profit leader, every day I think about education, the impacts of the degraded budget, and the concerns families have about the opportunities available to their children.
A program out of Washington, D.C., called the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit could help change that opportunity gap, but time is of the essence.
Six out of ten Massachusetts students are unable to read or do math at grade level. For Black, Latino, and low-income students, it’s eight out of ten. These aren’t abstract statistics; they’re children in Boston, Lynn, Lawrence, Springfield and Brockton who are falling further behind while the adults around them are mired in ideological disputes about the system rather than focused on the kids it’s meant to serve.
The reality is, whether you’re in deep blue Massachusetts or bright red Arkansas, your zip code still determines your educational outcomes. We’d like to think otherwise, but the numbers don’t lie.
Weston and Wellesley have resources that Lynn and Chelsea and Holyoke do not. That, of course, isn’t a new observation, but rather the stubborn reality of educational inequality that reformers, policymakers, and legislators have spent decades trying to address with limited success.
This new federal program has the capacity to improve that significantly, but how quickly depends entirely on when Gov. Maura Healey acts. This decision has a clock on it. The infrastructure needed to serve underserved communities takes time to build. Acting now means more kids in Lynn have the same access as kids in Lexington. Waiting means the gap grows.
The new law, which was signed last July, allows taxpayers to redirect up to $1,700 of their federal tax liability to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations—groups that provide tutoring, afterschool programs, summer learning, transportation, and educational support to K-12 students.
According to some estimates, if Massachusetts opts in and just 30 percent of taxpayers participate, it will generate more than $667 million annually in new education funding to support kids, including low- and middle-income families who pay for tutoring, out of school activities, transportation and computer equipment.
Massachusetts taxpayers will be eligible to take advantage of this program whether the governor opts in or not. The only question is whether those dollars come back to Massachusetts children, or instead flow to students in states that moved faster. We are a federal donor state, which means we already send more to Washington than we get back. This is a rare chance to reverse that equation—on our terms, through our organizations, for our kids. Opting out doesn’t protect anything. It just means Massachusetts families subsidize someone else’s opportunity.
Massachusetts voters are already there on this issue. Recent statewide polling found that by a 37-point margin, voters would rather redirect their federal tax dollars to organizations funding scholarships for Massachusetts students than pay into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) general fund. Parents back the idea more strongly—69 percent approving, against 53 percent of nonparents. The families closest to this want the money working here, not somewhere else.
The program launches this coming January, but the clock is already running. Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) must be established, certified, and operational in order to benefit. Communities that move early will have functioning SGOs ready to serve students on day one. Communities that wait will not.
Wealthy communities already have philanthropic infrastructure—foundations, donor networks, and the civic capacity to stand up new organizations quickly. Lower-income communities, the ones with the greatest need, are the most dependent on lead time. Every month Massachusetts delays, the gap widens between those with resources and those without resources.
In Boston, we see the real challenges faced in this last budget cycle and the almost 600 school-based layoffs that were necessary to meet our financial restraints. This will have a direct impact on academic growth and success. The kids in our classrooms and the families in our neighborhoods can’t wait. They need help now.
The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit doesn’t fix the structural problem, but it opens a new funding channel for tutoring, afterschool, and supplemental support that bypasses the levy cap entirely, requires no new state appropriation, and doesn’t depend on a ballot question going the right way.
Republicans have spent decades running against broken urban school systems and winning. Gov. Healey and Democrats who get behind the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit won’t be just helping kids; they will be taking the issue off the table.
By shaping where the money flows and which organizations administer it, they control the implementation. They can help determine the extent to which this program serves public school families or gets captured by private school interests. That’s not a concession to the right, that’s smart politics.
The question isn’t whether this is good policy. Broad scholarship access, no new state spending, community-based implementation, and a direct benefit to working families – that’s a no-brainer. The question is timing. Waiting means the gap grows.
Gov. Healey should follow the leadership of Colorado’s Jared Polis and New York’s Kathy Hochul, both of whom have signaled their intent to opt their states in. Our communities need the time to get this right.
Annissa Essaibi George is a Dorchester resident who is a former At-Large Boston City Councillor, non-profit leader and public school teacher, and longtime advocate for youth, families, and communities.
