Convolutedly, tax money pays for poor Berks students to go to religious schools

What’s the murky truth behind this crisp Reading Eagle headline: “$40,000 donation will help needy children in Berks County attend private schools”?

The story is about how a bank got tax relief by donating to a scholarship fund run by the Berks County Community Foundation.

Stick with me here. It’s a minor story, but this is important! How schools are funded, and whether the public-school model shifts toward private and religious school management, are watershed issues in education policy.

Back to the story … It sounds sweet. A win-win. A friendly bank gets good press; kids in “low-achieving” schools [all Reading’s public schools and, somewhat bizarrely, Fleetwood HS] get better educations.

But only private schools? That didn’t sound right.

Three times, the Eagle story says that the fund is to help pay for students to go to private schools. But according to the state and the foundation, the fund is designed to help students pay for private or public schools.

Otherwise it would seem like a bald school-choice scheme to give tax breaks to businesses and create a pool of money to lure students from failing public schools to non-public, mostly religious schools.

Ironically, that’s pretty close to what it is. A third-grader at a Reading elementary school can’t use that scholarship check to help pay tuition at Wilson, or Gov. Mifflin or Exeter. Her only choices are private and overwhelmingly religious schools. In Berks, no public schools have signed up to take the students who want to get out of city schools. About 25 private schools, mostly religious, have.

Across the state, only a handful of public schools will accept these students. Local public schools don’t want to accept students from city schools, it seems. Religious schools, perhaps with a higher mission of saving souls, not just creating knowledgeable problem solvers, are happy to take the money.

Certainly parents are desperate to get their children out of Reading schools [and perhaps Fleetwood HS]. For the 2013-14 year, the foundation received 644 applications and had enough money to offer scholarships to 52 students. Between 2002 and 2013, the fund provided almost $1 million for the benefit of about 1,400 Berks County students.