House Bill 1140, co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Walsh, would specifically fund ESAs for low-income students, special needs families and students trapped in failing schools

Carleen Johnson
The Center Square Washington

Washington state Rep. Travis Couture, R-Allyn, has introduced legislation to create scholarships for students via Education Savings Accounts, commonly called ESAs.

House Bill 1140, co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, would specifically fund ESAs for low-income students, special needs families and students trapped in failing schools.

Couture told The Center Square that savings accounts let parents decide what’s best for their children’s education.

“You are funding the student and making that portable, instead of funding the system,” he explained.

According to a news release emailed to The Center Square, “The funds would be available via a state-issued debit card, with oversight capability. The money would have to be spent on education, including tuition, fees, textbooks, tutoring, therapies and more.”

Couture went on to say, “Kids can get locked into a particular ZIP code where schools are failing and this bill prioritizes those kids, and also kids with special needs who aren’t getting the services and supports that they should be getting.”

The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is opposed to the bill.

“Like similar efforts across the nation, this legislation aims to redirect public taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private organizations. Washington state has a long and proud history of supporting strong public schools,” an OSPI statement emailed to The Center Square said. “We have built a public education system where, by the eighth grade, only seven states statistically outperform our students in math and just two states statistically outperform our students in reading (data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress).”

However, according to OSPI’s own data, just over 50% of students met English Language Arts standards, less than 40% met math standards, and 43.5% met science standards in assessments taken during spring 2023.

“We’ve got a huge problem, and it’s not like having ESAs or other choices will solve that overnight, but we need to have competition in the system,” Couture noted.

He explained there are two ways an ESA can be funded under the bill.

“The Legislature could decide to appropriate funding for ESAs, but even if they did not allocate any money for it, we’ve established a B&O [business and occupation] tax credit where business owners can decide to contribute a portion of their B&O tax to the general fund or to ESA’s,” Couture said.

The Allyn lawmaker cited recent nationwide polling that found ESAs are supported by 73% of Americans.

“We’ve already seen a massive wave of disenrollment in our public schools, and we’re saying we want to make sure that parents who don’t have the means to disenroll their children actually have the support they deserve to give their children a great education,” Couture said.

According to The Manhattan Institute, as previously reported by The Center Square, nationwide enrollment decreased by 2% between 2013 and 2022, while enrollment in Washington public schools has been down 4% just since 2019. Many of those students are now enrolled in private schools, charter schools or home school programs.

Couture concedes the measure may not pass the Legislature with Democrats in the majority, but he hopes he can at least get a public hearing.

“I think this is really one of the big civil rights issues of our time and other states have figured this out,” he said. “For us to simply ignore it, would be a bad move.”

The Center Square contacted the Washington Education Association for comment on the bill but did not received a response by the time of publication.

The 105-day legislative session starts on Jan. 13.

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.