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Call Foul on NJ's Voucher Proposal Before the Clock Runs Out

The voucher bill has cleared the Assembly Commerce Committee and is subject to be voted on by the Senate and Assembly. Supporters of the bill say they have enough votes to pass it and put it on Gov. Chris Christie's desk within weeks.

We need your help to make sure it doesn't happen.

The fundamental facts of the latest version of the Opportunity Scholarship Act remain the same:

• Corporations would contribute to a state-run scholarship fund for tuition at private schools in exchange for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit.
• This friendly payback to corporations would drain state revenues, costing the state treasury an estimated $1 billion, according to the New Jersey Education Association.
• In short, the taxpayers will be the ones footing the bill, not the corporations. Yet funding from the public doesn't mean accountability to the public - private schools are allowed to sidestep laws governing transparency, religious freedom and discrimination.

The arrangement itself is based on a crapshoot. Only 12 districts would receive the voucher money, while students who draw unlucky numbers would remain in their old schools. The truth of the matter is the bill would provide 25 percent of the vouchers to students who are already attending private schools.

Contact your legislators today to tell them that S1872 is bad for public education, religious freedom and accountability to the people. Vouchers do not address the core problems in education. Instead, they send hundreds of millions of dollars to private and religious schools that can evade accountability and circumvent civil rights laws that protect public school students from discrimination and violations of their First Amendment rights.

We hope this is the third strike for vouchers. It's time to call them out once and for all.

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