BusinessReport.com

In his lightning-round second special session, completed two weeks ago in the bare-minimum five days, Gov. Bobby Jindal claims the Legislature gave him everything he wanted. Actually, he got more than he asked for in one important area—almost more than he could afford.

The surprise item in his call for the recent session, dominated by surplus spending and business tax cuts, was a proposal to allow parents of private and parochial school students to deduct half of the tuition from their state income taxes, up to a $5,000 deduction per child. The same plan passed last year in a bill by Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Livonia, but then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a former public school teacher, spiked it with her veto pen.

Jindal resurrected the proposal this year as a way of partially balancing his business tax cuts by throwing a bone to people. But not all the people, which turned out to be trouble.

Team Jindal quickly realized that the greatest challenge for his plan would come not from teacher groups and school boards who opposed the bill, but from legislators who wanted in on it for their constituents with children in public schools.

The private-school tax break, a maximum $300 savings for a family paying $10,000 in tuition, addresses neither failing public schools nor does much to lighten the financial burden of families trying to escape them. Signing the bill scores points for Jindal in social-conservative circles nationwide and cheaply, too, costing only $20 million a year.

Both supporters and critics consider the deduction a back-door approach to private-education vouchers. By its modest size, it’s more like a foot in the back door.

Yet legislators, nervous about leaving out the majority of their constituents, sought to improve the bill [or kill it] by bloating it. The administration had to scramble when Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, attached an amendment to extend the deduction to public school parents for school and band uniforms and all manner of supplies, including computers.

In pressing for his amendment, Nevers also vented some steam about the governor not at least mentioning his so-called major education initiative beforehand to the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who would be Nevers.

With a $60 million price tag, Nevers’ addition would have broken the bank on the bill and perhaps caused Jindal to scuttle it. It did not come to that, however, thanks to Nevers accepting a compromise to limit the public-school deduction to uniforms at an extra cost of only $3 million.

The small victory for public school supporters nonetheless sets an important precedent of no parent left behind. Having public school parents along for the ride will greatly limit how much future legislatures can afford to increase the private-school deduction.

Best it grows no more. That is not the case for another voucher-lite plan the governor will advance in the regular session. His executive budget includes $10 million for “scholarships” for students to move from failing public schools in New Orleans to private and parochial schools.

While it would touch only 1,200 or so students in only one parish, the scholarship plan could make a profound impact on a limited number of children where it is needed most, as opposed to, with the tax deduction, a minimal savings for all and an educational benefit for none.

The scholarship program is part of a multiprong attack to address beleaguered New Orleans schools that were failing before they were recovering. One down side is that allowing the most promising students a way out of public schools will keep those schools from improving their overall performance. But if getting a real education can fundamentally improve the prospects of 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 children per year, the whole community benefits. And other communities could too, dollars permitting, because New Orleans doesn’t have a monopoly on failing schools.

Now that the governor and Legislature, with the tuition tax break, have put a foot in that back door to vouchers, they should open it wider with scholarships for those who need it most.