One of the biggest victims of government overreach during the coronavirus pandemic has been America’s schoolchildren.
For months, many schools across the country have been closed in the name of slowing the spread of the virus, despite ample evidence that school closures were misguided from the start.
Even the CDC director has agreed that schools should be open. Nevertheless, scores of schools remain closed.
Some states, however, are beginning to push back.
In Virginia, Republican lawmaker Michael J. Webert has introduced House Bill 1742, which would tie certain school funding to in-person instruction.
“[I]n the event that any school board does not provide the option of in-person instruction as the sole method of instruction for any enrolled student,” the bill reads, “the parent of any such student who withdraws his child from attendance to receive, upon request, an education voucher.”
The voucher would be equal to “a prorated share of the applicable Standards of Quality per-pupil state funds appropriated for public school purposes and apportioned to the school division, including the per-pupil share of state sales tax funding in basic aid and any state per-pupil share of special education funding for which the child is eligible, to cover the expenses of providing in-person instruction in an alternative setting.”
This would be huge for so many young learners and their parents.
During the coronavirus pandemic, parent satisfaction with K-12 schools has dropped precipitously, and remote learning has been deemed by many to be an utter failure.
Many parents are looking for other options.
