HB199 appropriates $30 million in state funding for “education savings accounts” in FY 2025, increases the annual “scholarship award” to $7,000, and eliminates income requirements for all K-12 students.

The House passed HB199 on February 27, 2025, by a vote of 42 to 19. We have assigned pluses to the nays because education is not the role of government—it is the responsibility of a child’s parents or family. This bill, under the appealing but misleading guise of “school choice,” expands the government’s monopoly on K-12 education, which seeks to displace traditional private schools and homeschooling in favor of universal state-sponsored schooling. Its exchange of public subsidies for curriculum and other regulatory controls effectively turns every participating student into a government-school student. The best “school choice,” by far, is for parents to choose not to place their child’s education in the hands of the state. Educational and economic freedom cannot be achieved by forcing other citizens to furnish their hard-earned tax dollars to fund all that now entails a compulsory, failing, and government-run K-12 school system.