My sister and I attended Catholic schools for 12 years.
These were not elite institutions. None of my classmates, as far as I know, went to Ivy League universities. On balance, the education we got was on par with what the local public schools offered.
But it was important to our parents that we pray in class and get Catholic religious instruction. Public schools couldn’t deliver that, and our non-Catholic neighbors wouldn’t want them to.
So my parents paid the tuition, understanding that a family choosing this route had to make sacrifices. No one thought of using public money to support private education.
But that idea may be front and center in this year’s Alabama legislative session.
Gov. Kay Ivey and several Republican legislators want to expand the state programs that put public money into private schools. They’re talking specifically about “education savings accounts.”
These programs allow parents to take the equivalent of what gets spent on each student in the state and apply it to private school tuition, online learning, or other services. Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, proposed a bill last year that would have eventually given every student in the state an education savings account of $6,900.