While the income limit for scholarships is nearly $150,000 per four-person household, it is unlikely that low-income students make up the bulk of scholarship recipients. According to Susan Spicka, the executive director of Education Voters of PA, there is no auditing or reporting being done that would indicate this family income limit is being checked by private schools, let alone enforced. “There really is no safeguard against very, very wealthy families being able to tap into this money,” Spicka told me, adding there is “real resistance” in the state legislature to change this.
The Keystone report also cites Spicka’s research showing that 100 percent of OSTC-recipient schools have policies in place that allow students to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, pregnancy or abortion, academic performance, or “right fit.”
Since private schools are exempt from nondiscrimination laws, they can expel or refuse to admit any student for any reason, even if the school is receiving public funds through the voucher programs. At some schools, students’ families are required to go to church before enrolling or have a pastor reference, she said, and in others, “you can’t be even friends with kids who are in the LGBTQ+ community and be enrolled in the school.”
