After court defeats SC school choice vouchers, conservative billionaire steps in to foot bill

Education

October 18, 2024

This article by Nick Reynolds originally appeared in the Post and Courier.

COLUMBIA — A conservative Pennsylvania billionaire will foot tuition costs for hundreds of private school students after South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled a new school choice voucher program is unconstitutional.

Jeffrey Yass, a political megadonor and longtime school choice advocate, is donating approximately $900,000 to cover tuition for families this fall who received a school choice scholarship from the state prior to the decision.

The announcement, from the Columbia-based advocacy Palmetto Promise Institute Oct. 17, comes weeks after the court ruled the taxpayer funded program violated longstanding provisions barring public funds from flowing to private schools.

The effort was targeted toward providing students at 200 percent of the poverty line and below with a $6,000 scholarship to attend the accredited institution of their choice.

The court’s Sept. 11 decision came approximately 180 days after oral arguments had been made and after many students had received the first $1,500 quarterly payment for tuition.

The result led to what the Palmetto Promise described as an outpouring of concern from and for low-income families whose scholarships had been ended during the near-start of the middle of the school year.

After the ruling, Wendy Damron, the group’s executive director, began making phone calls to “every person I knew” in an effort to find a private source to foot the tuition costs, she said in an interview.

That led to Yass, a major donor to conservative organizations like Club for Growth and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and who is additionally considered by some to be the wealthiest man in the state of Pennsylvania.

“I didn’t know him at all,” Damron said in an interview. “I actually never heard of him before.”

Yass was also top donor to the Club for Growth’s School Freedom Fund during the 2022 elections cycle, when the group spent approximately $750,000 boosting South Carolina’s now-elected Republican education superintendent — and former Palmetto Promise Institute director — Ellen Weaver’s campaign. She is a supporter of the voucher program.

Damron said she was “blown away” that anyone, particularly a tech billionaire from Pennsylvania, would be generous enough to donate so much money.

“(Some of these schools) would be taking huge financial losses, especially some of the schools that took dozens of families, dozens of these ESA kids,” Damron said. “They would take this huge financial hit and maybe be hesitant to try it again. So he was just making an investment in our kids in South Carolina.”

The funding has its limits. While the 2024-25 school year was capped by statute at 5,000 students, Yass’ donation will only fund scholarship recipients for the rest of the calendar year — meaning Palmetto Promise is still seeking donors to cover the cost of student vouchers for the duration of the school year, through June.

Damron said she is hopeful they won’t have to wait that long.

Though the state Legislature declined to hold a special session this fall to attempt to institute a new school choice program, Damron said she is confident the new, more conservative makeup of the state Supreme Court will help overcome the 3-2 majority that defeated the program earlier this fall.

“We believe the court will be more favorable to the Legislature going back, making some changes, and sending it back to the court,” she said. “We already have all the infrastructure in place. We have the families signed up, and the schools are signed up. It’s all in place, ready to go, and we feel confident that we will be able to get a new ESA bill passed and through the courts in time for the fall of 2025.”

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