By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — Inside the nearly $9 billion that Gov. Chris Christie’s budget allocates for schools is funding to revive a controversial pilot program that would, for the first time, offer scholarships for students to attend private and parochial schools with public money.
The budget includes $2 million to create a pilot “opportunity scholarship” program, that would allow about 200 children to transfer from failing public schools to private schools.
Christie has touted the idea of opportunity scholarships — or school vouchers — since entering office, but the idea has failed to win legislative approval. Today, he proposed a way.
“Any child in a chronically failing school should have the choice to find a better one, whether it be out-of-district or non-public,” he said. “I have been fighting for three years to end the abandonment of these children and their families. Today, that fight continues.”
And a fight may be ahead.
The Newark-based Education Law Center said only the Legislature, through separate legislation, can enact such a program into law.
“The governor’s attempt to use the budget bill, which is strictly limited to appropriations, to put in place a voucher pilot program that has not gained the support of legislators over the last several years is an illegal end run ,” said ELC Executive Director David Sciarra. “This proposal should be dead on arrival.”
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