Larry Lee is an Alabama native who cares about public schools. He has a particular interest in rural schools and community schools. He is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. This is his analysis of the recently passed “Alabama Accountability Act,” which enacted tax credits and is a stealth voucher plan.

Larry Lee writes:

Have you ever made a promise you knew you couldn’t keep? I sure did every time mama took a switch to me. “I promise, I promise I won’t ever do it again,” I hollered as I tried to dance out of her reach.

Unfortunately when you strip all the rhetoric away, when you cast aside all the pleadings that “this is for the children” and when you look at the starkness of the numbers, you see that this is what our legislature did when they passed the Alabama Accountability Act.

They made a promise they cannot keep. Whether this was intentional or just inept doesn’t much matter at this moment. HB 84 was passed by the Alabama House and Senate and signed into law on March 14, 2013 by Governor Bentley.

As they said, it is what it is. A promise that cannot be kept.

On page 13, line 13, the new law says:

“For tax years beginning on and after January 1, 2013, an Alabama income tax credit is made available to the parent of a student enrolled in or assigned to attend a failing school to help offset the coast of transferring the student to a non-failing public school or nonpublic school of the parent’s choice.”

It further states in the same paragraph:

“If income taxes owed by the parent are less than the total credit allowed under this subsection, the taxpayer shall be entitled to a refund or rebate, as the case may be, equal to the balance of the unused credit with respect to that taxable year.”

My math says there are 89,087 students in “failing schools” in Alabama. This means we have promised to give a tax credit or rebate check of about $3,500 to each of these students. That’s a liability of more than $311 million.

While some guesstimate that only 10 percent of these kids will apply for the money, they may need to take off their rose-colored glasses. A close look at Montgomery County shows what I mean.

There are 21 schools on the “failing” list in Montgomery with 14,511 students. Of these, 86 percent receive free and reduced lunches, a substantially higher rate than those in non-failing schools.

But here’s the rub. There is no way for the existing non-failing public schools to accommodate even a small portion of these kids. However, the law says the rebate, “is made available”. It does not say “may be available under certain circumstances.”

There are seven public high schools in Montgomery. Three, with a total of 4,848 students, are failing. Three are magnet schools that have stiff entrance exams. So the failing high school students have only one public school option, Carver High with 1,385 students. They’re going to add nearly 200 classrooms and 200 new teachers to take all these students? Highly unlikely.

What about these kids going to private schools? For one thing, how many poverty families can send their kids to a private school, even with a $3,500 rebate since tuition is far more than $3,500? And can private schools in Montgomery absorb 14,511 additional students?

Or do we just hold a lottery to see who gets into a school where there is some space and who gets the $3,500 rebate? Surely since we’re dead set against gambling we would never do this. (Even though the truth is that in some places in Alabama we already hold lotteries to see which kids get to go to pre-kindergarten.)

Of course there are plans for a scholarship fund to help students get into private schools. Let’s say 10 percent of the Montgomery students can get into private schools (1,451 students); at $5,000 per scholarship, that’s more than $7 million for just this one school system.

But forget all this guessing on numbers and go back to the law and the promise that each child in a failing school in Alabama is worth approximately $3,500. Common sense tells me that a single mother who takes advantage of free lunches for her school age kids is also going to apply to get $3,500 for each of them. And she’ll find plenty of tax preparers who will be glad to help her–for a cut of the rebate.

But wait, if her kids don’t move to a non-failing school is this then tax fraud? Is it her fault the local school can’t find space for her children in qualified schools? Is it her fault some lawmakers made a promise they could not keep?

One might even ask: is it the mother perpetrating the fraud, or is it the state of Alabama?

Larry Lee led the study, Lessons Learned from Rural Schools, and is a long-time advocate for public education who frequently writes about education issues. larrylee33@knology.net