JACKSON TWP — The Seneca Valley School Board has taken a stand against proposed legislation that would allow private schools to get state education funding.

Board members passed a resolution Monday opposing Education Savings Account voucher programs outlined in state Senate Bill 2. The bill is currently before the state Senate Education Committee.

“It's essentially bad public policy, and I worry that it's a slippery slope,” said Fred Peterson, Seneca Valley school director.

The bill would amend the state's Public School Code to provide education savings accounts, or ESAs, to school-age children in low-achieving public schools, defined as those ranked in the bottom 15 percent based on standardized test scores.

The money would be taken from a school district's state subsidy funding.

The accounts would be around $5,000 per student, said John Callahan, chief advocacy officer with the Pennsylvania School Board Association, based on calculations using a formula outlined in the bill.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association asked boards to pass a resolution opposing the ESA vouchers. More than 200 had done so as of April 18, according to a list kept by the PSBA.

Seneca Valley is the only school board in the county to pass such a resolution.

The ESA money could be spent on qualified educational expenses, which include tuition, textbooks or uniforms for private schools, a higher education institution, a tutor or a distance learning program not offered by the public school.

It would also cover occupational, physical, speech and behavioral therapies for children with disabilities.

While the program would allow students to seek opportunities elsewhere, especially children with special needs, it would take much-needed money away from schools that are already underresourced, said Peterson, who handles legislative issues for the school board.

“If you're in a low-achieving school and you pull those kids out and their slice of the public funds, then the school has fewer and fewer resources to solve those problems,” Peterson said.

Eric DiTullio, school board vice president, said the bill sounds good on paper, but unintended consequences could spiral out of control for the lower-performing districts, and later for other school districts.

“The kids that remain there will have more cuts to their programs,” DiTullio said. “It's not going to solve their problem. It's going to exacerbate it.”

Callahan said there is usually a connection between the lower-performing schools in the state and higher poverty levels.

While schools like Seneca Valley have a strong local tax base, many of the schools on the low-achieving list are the ones that rely heavily on state funding.

“It doesn't invest in those schools,” Callahan said of the proposed policy. “It takes away from those schools. And those are the ones that need the most help.”

Callahan said studies on similar voucher programs in states like Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana have shown no improvement in academic performance for students using the vouchers.

Additionally, private schools do not have the same financial and academic transparency standards as public schools, Callahan said. So there would be no way to know how that money is being spent once students are enrolled in those schools.

While there are no schools in Butler County on the list of low-achieving districts, Seneca Valley board members wanted to show their support for school boards and districts that would be directly affected.

“We're concerned on behalf of our brother and sister school districts that are struggling, that they'll have to struggle harder,” Peterson said. “It's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots.”

He said they're also concerned that if Senate Bill 2 is passed, it could lead to other legislation that would take control away from school boards.