A school voucher bill proposed by Governor Kim Reynolds is advancing this legislative session that would redirect public school funding to a student’s account that can be used to help pay for private school.

Senate File 159 passed on the Senate floor Thursday, which stipulates there are no income limits to qualify for a “student first scholarship” account, but families must come from a public school that’s in the bottom performance level under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The bill also establishes a charter school system which would allow groups to open charters which would be publicly funded but would operate independently from public districts. House District 84 Representative Joe Mitchell (R) shares his thoughts on school vouchers, “In general I am not normally in favor of the voucher systems that have been proposed previously. Whether you can argue that money is directly or indirectly coming from our public schools to be going towards these vouchers which ultimately helps people go to private schools. Where I grew up in Wayland there’s no choice but to go to WACO, right? To the public school there and so we need to make sure that we’re supporting our public schools as much as possible, because in a lot of these communities the public school’s the bedrock of the community. So making sure that we have strong public schools is always my number one priority.”

The student first scholarship program would apply to school budgets beginning July 1st, 2022, and each student enrolled in a charter school would be counted in the student’s district of residence. That district is then required to pay the charter school the state cost per pupil.