Education Alert---you are about to be excluded

House Education Committee moving legislation today. The House Education Committee is scheduled to move legislation today to create "Promise Zones for the Poor", (HB5375).  It is fashioned after the Kalamazoo Promise, a college scholarship program for kids in the Kalamazoo Public School district. This program was funded by several private donors and provides free college education for any public school student in the KPS district who meets minimum performance requirements.

HB5375 is very bad legislation for a number of reasons, including that it only qualifies certain geographical districts based on income levels of their residents.  The problem is, rich kids in a poor district could qualify for a free scholarship, but poor kids in a rich district would not qualify. You can read the bill and analysis here.

But the real problem with this bill is that it excludes, charter schools (public school academies), private and religious schools and any child who is home-educated.

You need to call or write your legislator immediately and express your opinion.  You can find your legislator here.

You should all contact the Chair of the Education Committee, Tim Melton, and ask him to reconsider this legislation. Link to his e-mail address here.  It is wrong to use taxpayer funds, collected from ALL taxpayers of the state and target those funds only to certain recipients based on where they live and whether they go to a government school.