South Carolina lawmakers are considering a temporary change to the state’s school voucher program after discovering that some homeschooled students were awarded funding, something legislative leaders say was never intended.
The state Senate’s Finance Committee backed a measure earlier this week that would prohibit additional homeschooled students from entering the program. About 1,000 students who are already enrolled would be grandfathered in.
Senate Education Committee Chair Greg Hembree said the voucher program explicitly excludes students in any of South Carolina’s three approved homeschool options. However, the state Department of Education has interpreted the law to allow homeschooled students outside of those options to qualify.
Hembree said that interpretation has resulted in students receiving state money while being educated in largely unregulated environments.
“I think what we intended to do was the right decision at the time,” Hembree said at a finance committee meeting this week. “And I think that this approach has been a catastrophe. I mean, it’s just been a mess.”
The committee initially voted to pause a planned expansion of the voucher program, which would have kept the total number of enrollees at 10,000 next year. But lawmakers later reversed that decision, and the program will continue with an expansion to 15,000 next year.
The full Senate is expected to take up the proposal April 21, when lawmakers begin budget negotiations.
Senators grilled state Superintendent Ellen Weaver about the issue back in February, saying that they explicitly intended to leave homeschooled students out of the program. They warned that the issue could affect their trust in her.
Weaver has said she believes she's executing the law faithfully, as it was written.
