PA House Health — 2026-04-14

Thank you. Thank you.

I don't think I ever gaveled. I don't—you're probably right.

Representative Paul Frill, I'm Chester County, 26th District. Good morning.

Mary Isaacson, 175th District, Philadelphia County.

Mark Anderson, 92nd District, Northern York County.

Tara Probst the 189th District Eastern Monroe and Southern Pike Counties Barb Gleim the 199th district in cumberland county malu mckenzie the 131st district part of northampton county part of lehigh county and part of montgomery county

Morning, Brian Cutler, 100th Legislative District, Southern Lancaster County. I just want to welcome Representative DeVanzo, who is our new member for the committee. I want to also thank all the testifiers here this morning. This is an issue that I'm personally very interested in and look forward to hearing about both the utilization as well as the possible improvements related in your testimony and look forward to getting right into the topic of discussion.

Good morning, Chair Swire, Chair Cutler, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on Pennsylvania's education tax credit program. Sure. Under Act 48 of 2017, the IFO reviewed various tax credits over a five-year period. The office publicly released the report on the ETCs in January 2022. At the time of the review, total tax credits were capped at only $280 million annually. So my comments are really made in that context. The IFO analysis covered the five-year period from fiscal year 15-16 to fiscal year 19-20. And some of the major findings of that analysis were that 99% of participating firms made two-year commitments and received a tax credit equal to 90% of their contribution. There were only modest state savings, roughly $350 per student on average, from students switching from public to private schools, and that was largely due to strong school district-hold-harmless provisions in Pennsylvania. Compared to other states with similar programs, Pennsylvania had the highest allowance for funds retained by organizations to cover administrative and other costs. As the cap on the ETCs increased, additional contributions flowed disproportionately to a small number of large organizations. For the educational improvement tax credit component, contributions increased by $92 million over the five-year period, and during that time, 64 million, or 70 percent, of the newly available funds flowed to the top 10 organizations. Statutory limitations on data collection prevented the analysis of the key outcome data necessary for the IFO to determine whether the program achieved its stated goals or whether state funds were used effectively. The report also included several recommendations to enhance program efficiency, and I'll summarize some of those for you now. We recommended that there should be more accountability for contributions not used to fund scholarships or educational improvement programs. We also recommended that to facilitate a thorough evaluation of program effectiveness, the statute should be amended to allow the collection of certain key performance data. The student cap on the Education Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit, the EOSTC award, should be eliminated. We recommended the elimination of the early application period for firms receiving their two-year contribution, renewing their two-year contribution commitments. We also recommended that DCED should publish an annual report summarizing the basic ETC program data that they do collect under the current statute Lastly, the analysis identified three key decision points for policymakers to consider when making future updates to the program. One, we recommended, one, for fiscal year 1920, 997 firms associated with $137 million in contributions were unable to procure a credit allocation. Those firms were on a waiting list for the program. Does the significant wait list imply that the credit tax rate is too high? Would the same amount of contributions occur if the tax credit were awarded at a rate of 80% or 60%? Number two, at the time of program evaluation, it was noted that household income thresholds for scholarship participation were higher than all other states with a threshold. If the intent is to provide scholarship opportunities to the neediest students, should the thresholds be lowered? Number three, what is a reasonable share of contributions for an organization to retain to cover administrative expenses? Should there be a sliding scale so that smaller organizations with lower contribution amounts can retain a higher share, but larger organizations with higher contributions retain less? That's the end of my testimony, and I'll be happy to answer any questions later.

Morning, Chairman Schreier, Chairman Cutler. Thank you for having me this morning. Members of the committee, I appreciate your time. Jim O'Donnell, the Director of the Tax Credit Program at DCD, $680 million, as you mentioned, Chairman. Very anxious and appreciate the opportunity to explain to you the details of the program, the role of the department, the role of the agency. Certainly answer any questions and open for further dialogue even outside of today's committee hearing.

Thank you.

Oh, sorry. The Department of Revenue is responsible for administering the tax credits for the program. We verify compliance, we apply the tax credit to the appropriate accounts, and we process refunds. In our written testimony, we shared a step-by-step process to give this committee a better picture of how these programs work, from when the entities submit their applications to DCED to the final step of getting a credit from the Department of Revenue. So there are multiple steps involved that need to take place before a taxpayer can receive a tax credit under this program. Some of the concerns we've received in the past include the timeline for taxpayers who have made contributions through a special purpose entity commonly known as an SPE to receive their tax credit. The vast majority of these educational tax credits come through pass-through entities. In order for the awardees, the individuals who contributed to the SPE to receive their credit, the SPE must file the REV 1123 form when they file their taxes, and then the department can allocate the credit to the individuals. If these entities file extensions in the fall, we will not have all the documentation to process the credits, even if the individual files in the spring. So the department has taken multiple steps to improve our process, including educating entities about filing the proper forms, and that they certainly can file on extension, but it may delay the individuals receiving the credit. it. We've also dedicated additional staff to processing these returns. So I'm now going to turn it over to Megan to discuss other changes we have implemented to our tax administration system. Overall, we've been able to reduce processing time since we have all of the required documentation. We continue to work with taxpayers, pass-through entities, and DCED to streamline the process. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Megan Swisher, and I'm the director of the Bureau of Path Development and Support, path and my path being the department's integrated tax system. In addition to the steps that Deputy Secretary Gill outlined, another change that we have implemented for the first time this year is making the REV 1123 form electronic. Making the form electronic has helped us streamline the process for pass-through entities to allocate the credits to the owners contributing to the entity. In prior years, it was solely a paper form that had to be completed manually by the entities and either faxed or mailed or emailed into the department. As you can imagine, this was not only time-consuming for the taxpayer, but also time-consuming for the department to review the forms. In addition, it will also help the department to have the form electronically so we can be more efficient with our review of the tax returns. We've worked with our partners at DCED to make sure taxpayers know that the form is now available electronically and will continue to collaborate on those communications efforts. So we thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning, and we'll be happy to take any questions members may have on the department's role in administering these programs.

Chairman Schreier, Chairman Cutler, members of the committee, good morning. My name is Annabelle Aportella. I a data and policy analyst who been working with Arizona education data for 30 years I been asked to provide the committee with information about the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account Program its impact on the state general fund and also the type of data that is available and not currently available. My written testimony provides a brief explanation of our school funding system and how adding school choice options, including ESAs, has created pressure on the state general fund. I was instructed to be very brief at the beginning. So I at this point, I was prepared to answer questions based on my written testimony. Would you like me to actually give us a quick overview, please, by all means. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, ESAs in Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs, they began in 2011 in Arizona as a school choice option for students with disabilities only. Over the years, the eligibility has expanded to include students from, for example, military families or students who are attending D or F schools in our school accountability system. And there's been other categories of eligibility. Beginning in the 22-23 school year, ESAs became universal, meaning that any Arizona resident is eligible to participate in the ESA, regardless of whether they've attended public school previously. The funding for ESAs is 90% of the charter school formula. Arizona has an extensive charter school system, and that funding is a bit higher than the traditional district funding because charters do not have access to local property taxes. And so even though ESAs are funded at 90% of the charter, it still ends up being a bit higher than your traditional district schools. So because of that, the cost of charters and ESAs is 100% on the general fund. So the fact that there is currently no cap on enrollment of students in ESAs or charters and no cap on the cost of the ESA program, it is putting quite a bit of pressure on the state general fund. And because there's no cap, we also don't have very good estimates of how much this is going to cost in the future. Our Joint Legislative Budget Committee has estimated that we expect to have about 30% of about 1.2 million students being funded entirely on the state general fund, meaning that there's no local property tax share. So that is definitely putting some pressure on the state general fund. And my written testimony has some graphs which kind of show the impact of this visually and the stress that it has really put on the legislature as they make budgetary decisions and what that means for other state agencies as well. And in terms of the data availability, we have some basic information around participation, and it is reported out each quarter, and there are snapshots. So we don't really have trends, but we have some snapshots multiple times during the year. We have participation numbers by eligibility category special education English language learners and by grade We also have participation by zip code and some information about where the students were previously enrolled if they were enrolled in a public school, and award amounts, though not specifically totals, just some estimates of what those award amounts are. What we don't really have information on is, as I mentioned, trends, including how many exits or graduations there are from students in ESAs. And also we do not currently have information about ESA students returning to the public schools and what that potential cost could be. We have some anecdotal information, but no data really. And we also do not know out of the ESA participants how many are in a private school setting or a homeschool setting. I should mention that ESAs do not have to be used for private school. So the way that the ESAs are used, there are allowable expenses, but it's not necessary that that money be used in a private school. So we know we have homeschoolers, but we don't know how many. We also do not have any kind of information about the academic achievement of ESA students. That's not a requirement. And we don't have demographic information about ESA participants, either specifically income or poverty levels or race, ethnicity type of information. And no kind of actual costs. Again, both the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, they provide estimates, and the Department of Education provides snapshots. But we don't and the award amounts that are reported are for full year participation estimates. And we know that students participate for parts of the year. So, again, the total cost is not known, just some rough estimates. And I think that's it. I am happy to answer questions. Thank you very much.

Good morning and thank you for your testimony. One thing I just want to point out from your testimony in the independent fiscal office is that we have the highest threshold in any other state. That was an interesting factoid. And I just want to start because one thing that I did do was ask a question about the increases that we have made in the past 10 years with regard to investments in education. And for the 10 years, we have increased EITC 353%. And according to our resources here for public education over the past 10 years, for basic, special, level-up, adequacy, all that we've been trying to do, it's only been 60%. So percentage-wise, we certainly have made quite the investment in allowing for EITC and OSTC. So one of my questions, I have numerous, but due to time, is do we have any idea of who the children are, like a snapshot of who's being served from the programs, the EITC? Because we know who's being served in the public schools. We did not have I defer to GCED we did not have that information available to us when we did our analysis in 2021 Yes so we don know who the children are That is confidential information The scholarship organizations do identify who the children and families are

So this public money is being spent to provide assistance for the education of these children, but we don't know who they are and what return on investment we're getting for this money that we've spent sending out to these organizations is what you're basically saying at this point.

And then just one final, because I'm sure there's plenty of other questions. Do you think that we would be better serving to not just allow the money to EITC at such a high threshold, but possibly shift money to the OSTC so that we're reaching out and giving the opportunity to more people and making it available to lower-income families since we're disproportionately, apparently since we have the highest threshold of any state, giving to higher-income families.

Okay, so what you just said, because you're very soft-spoken. Okay, I'm sorry. So what you're saying is that for all this money that we have allotted in tax credits, there was money left on the table.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.

I have a few questions. First, I am thrilled that we as a committee are bipartisan on accountability and oversight of the money that we spend. That is a refreshing change in this building. So I think this is an appropriate hearing. At the beginning, we talked about there not being data to back this. I just want to give you some of the data. This is from the Department of Education, by the way. and alike. We had 102,000 scholarships that were awarded. 55,000 of those were in metro Philadelphia. 75% of those were in communities and families that we traditionally describe as underserved and underprivileged. Now, 69,000 did not. receive those due to some arbitrary caps that we come up with. But I just wanted to ask a question. a couple of questions to our panel that we had come up based on some of the scholarships. Is it Annabelle? What was the name online? I'm sorry.

your assessment, because we're talking about whether it works or not, is the savings accounts and the school choice reforms that Arizona made, is it working for students and families? Are kids better off?

Another question that I had is we're talking about those, the money that's on the table that's still out there, that's available. Do we have any idea why that money is still out there on the table? Why do we have money not being used?

Yes, so demand is on the rise for these scholarships. The other question, would our passing late budgets, because businesses work differently under fiscal year than we do, would our late budgets have anything to do? Would it give it less time, give those organizations less time to raise the money compared to if we passed our budgets on time when we're supposed to? Would that give them more time?

So if we, say, pass the budget in October or December, that would give these organizations weeks or months to raise money based on what private organizations, when they give and how they give, instead of, say, a year to raise money. It would give them much less time to build up the fund for those that need the scholarships. Because we had over, I think it was 68,000 scholarships denied. uh so uh would it be safe to say late budgets are are impacting contributions again i'm not i won't

would that then lend itself to donors not giving the next year if we don't fulfill their promise to repay them what we promised to do? Were there problems before? Was that going on where people weren't getting their tax credits in the fiscal year which they donated or didn't get them at all?

No, I appreciate your candor. I think it's just simply common sense that if you promise somebody a tax credit and they don't receive their tax credit, that they're not going to donate to get the tax credit again. I think that's a logical conclusion. And then the last thing that I wanted to address here is this doesn't only help, even though 75% of the recipients, you're correct, we don't have their names. We don't have their addresses, but we know that 75% of them are underserved and underprivileged. We know that. It's a data point. But it doesn't just help that community. If anybody has ever sent a kid to college, they know that this is a major problem in that you may not be poor enough to get help, but you're also not wealthy enough to pay for college out of pocket. Is it safe to say that these programs the ITC really really assist those middle class working class people who cannot afford a private education However okay however they not getting help anywhere else

So understand that this is not just helping one section of the population. This is a program designed to help underserved, underprivileged, and our working middle class. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you all for coming today. We really appreciate that. I have a couple of questions also because this is very interesting. I guess I'll start with just trying to understand like a snapshot of the kids that are served by these scholarships. And is there any data on the percentage of kids that are already attending private school that have now received scholarships as we've expanded these tax credits? meaning are we serving kids that we're targeting to move out of an education system, I guess what the intent was, and provide them an opportunity to move somewhere else, or are we providing scholarships to kids already attending private school? And if you could speak to that a little bit.

Okay, so we have no way to see if our scholarships are actually doing the intended thing, which is moving folks from one education system to another. Do we know, besides just like a broad, I guess, generalization of where they come from and make it in terms of income level, age of the students, you know, not name, but just do we know income, type of families coming in, the type of scholarships awarded, are they partial scholarships, full scholarships? Like what does this look like in practice when these scholarships are given out? And how do we – is there an audit trail for are these scholarships being awarded as intended, meaning they've hit these income thresholds, they're targeting in the right areas, they're – how do you know that? Who's checking this?

And those audits do they make compliance audit statements as far as that they given out scholarships to this level income students and all that Or what does the audit actually do So I mean it the full audit of the whole organization specifically referencing, in our case, you know, the scholarship dollars in, dollars out, but it's not...

They're making awards proper or within compliance to any income levels, right? Okay. And then I guess I know we mentioned that, and this will be my final question here. The part of the program is oversubscribed. Part of it is undersubscribed. We've talked about there's more demand, but I think we should split out demand, what we mean by that, because there's demand for scholarships, meaning the recipient of the scholarship. That's kind of one demand curve. And then there's the demand for tax credits, which is a separate demand, right? How much I'm applying for a tax credit, that's one demand. And then hopefully it lines up with the demands on the recipients of the scholarship, right? So those are two kind of separate things, if I understand it. And I think you said a lot of this is undersubscribed, but there are buckets that are oversubscribed. Could you talk to what buckets they are and what you're seeing in demand from a tax credit versus demand for scholarship recipients, if you have any data that supports any of that?

Oh, and that's going – and does that program have the same lack of data oversight as the other programs?

There is tracking. So the one program that we don't fund fully is the one that has all the data tracking it. I'll finally say that I think, you know, to have over half a billion dollars with lack of oversight, without having the data to support the academic outcomes or even who these scholarships go to is very concerning to me. and when you look at $680 million just for example going back to Arizona's point in the general fund we've lost for example out of the general fund with the federal cuts we have 120,000 people off of health insurance because of the federal cuts $50 million would fully fund those cuts for the fiscal year and you'd still have $620 million left over in EITC tax credits and you could fully fund insurance, which would be a heck of an interesting outcome for Pennsylvanians here. So I think we as legislators really need to understand how our taxpayers are being spent and are we getting a return on investment. So I'm fully supporting Mr. Chairman that we understand this data a lot better. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to be really clear that I am very supportive of EITC program and the OSTC program. I think it benefits the recipients. immensely and there are oversight mechanisms for those students because all those schools have to do reports to PDE on their abilities and how they're doing academically. Businesses have oversight through audits and tax returns that they do. So I just think that this is a great program. And actually I just want to make a plug for the federal EITC program that we were waiting for the governor to opt into. This federal EITC is 100 percent dollar for dollar. Now in our state with the EITC, I believe we have a two-year mandate where the same people, the same businesses have to give two years in a row to prove that they're going to continue that scholarship, and that's not dollar for dollar. And I think it's 90%, but I'm not sure, and maybe you guys can clarify what that process is for me here. Sure. Yeah, no, you are correct. A two-year cycle for the bricks-and-mortar business and or a special purpose entity receives a 90% tax credit. Right. As Stacey mentioned, it's high 90s percent of all of our participants that sign up for two years in order to get the higher tax credit percentage. But then there's also grandfather language within the legislation that enables companies to stay within the program year after year after year by doing two years. Right. So that so those businesses who are giving the tax credit and who are giving the scholarships through an organization or not, they have to project out two years of what maybe their income is going to be so they know what they can handle. So don't you think that we should get rid of the two-year mandate and be more aligned with what the federal is doing so that actually we'll open up more money to the students who are recipients of the scholarships? so again i'm not going to dive into my opinion on whether or not we should do one or two years um i would tell you that a concern if that would have for many years the eitc did not have grandfather language in it okay for the first 10 to 12 years maybe i'd have to look back of the program there was not grandfather language um so getting back involved in the program for some companies could become a challenge this is when budget amounts were much smaller uh so you had schools that were relying on dollars from XYZ Corporation to fund X amount of scholarships for that school year. And some of those donors were having a tough time getting back into the program, which could jeopardize availability of scholarship dollars for some of those students because they had a corporate donor who had supported them for many years that had a tough time getting back in. Now, again, keep in mind, these are much smaller budget amounts. I understand that. And there's credits on the table as we're speaking. But that was one of the, when it changed the grandfather language. That was one of the concerns for the reason in legislative changes. Okay, thank you. I would advocate to get rid of the two-year mandate. Go 100% dollar for dollar, and we will actually see any money still sitting on the table being utilized for a great program. Thanks.

I promise I'll be quick, Pete. For the essence of time, I just want to say that I'm not for the EITC. A couple things It really upsets me when I hear about public education and hear the word donors and corporate tax breaks Talking about education for our kids and benefiting corporations getting tax write It's just, it's messed up from a public school kid. And I don't know how we got here. I know when we got here. I don't, I don't like it. And when we talk about Arizona, thank you for your testimony. I have friends out there, and it's a mess. You know, with the whole push to do this, Arizona ranks 49th out of 50 states in education. Pennsylvania has over 1.6 million kids in public schools, about 60,000 to 65,000 in cyber, and 220,000 in private schools. We're in the top 10. We have more kids in traditional brick-and-mortar public education than we do with all of the others combined. And yet we're in the top ten in the United States for education, one of the last, by the way, for the federal government that funded, that funds us. So the whole push for, I'm sorry, school choice, give corporate people tax breaks, do this, it's like a free-for-all. and nothing is proven to help the numbers for the kids, only help in the pockets of corporations. If we took that money and we invested it into our traditional brick-and-mortar public schools, our outcomes would even be better.

Thank you, ma'am. I have Representatives D'Orsi and then McKenzie, and then I'll turn it over to Chair Keller. Representative D'Orsi.

The only part I guess I would be able to confirm of your comment would be that if a student would leave a public school, the dollars do not go with them through the purposes of EITC scholars. So in theory, classroom size has decreased when the dollar amount available for that classroom has remained the same.

Representative McKenzie and then Chair Cutler.

Thank you, ma'am. Chair Culler.

Right. That was before budget increases. I think it was I mentioned capacity. We were nearing being sold out of credits, if you will. Yep.

Yeah, I lived through it. That was Christmas Eve, I believe, 2015, if I'm right on that year. All right. The release of the letters happened on Christmas Eve.

Correct. Yeah, so we're approaching 1,000 EIOs. In comparison to scholarship organizations, there's roughly 260. So a significantly higher dollar amount of EIOs. That includes public school foundations, as you mentioned, libraries, museums, theaters, orchestras, all sorts of innovative learning. And $74.5 million, those credits are fully exhausted as we speak today with a waiting list approaching $26 to $29 million. Okay.

So I could tell you that EIO increased from $54.5 million to $74.5 million two fiscal cycles ago, and that $74.5 million was fully allocated immediately that year.

Yes, sir. That is correct. Our equalization formula for charters and ESAs is 100 percent out of the general fund.

Mr. Chairman, if I may? Briefly, ma'am, yes.

Dr. Orpertella, so you're saying that the existing students do consume a portion of that property tax revenue?

That's what I'm saying.

But if your student enrollment increases, that new uniform rate would never change?

Well, we do it very differently here in Pennsylvania, and I must say that you're – Yes, you do.

But the idea, I struggle to understand the simple math. If you add more students, you add more costs. You're going to have to make that up at some point. The funding level is different also. That's the other thing that's happening.

I have some questions, if I may. Mr. O'Donnell, let me start with you, if I may. You said in your testimony something that was interesting.

the various, any specific information about a student, but anything else. Can you elaborate on that a little bit Yeah so the EITC legislation since the program began 25 years ago outlines clearly in the legislation what the department can request from all program participants It clearly defined And then the final statement in the legislation ends that the department cannot ask for any additional information as expressly outlined in this article or something to that extent

Then I'll punt over to Stacey.

Yes, we had a list. the change in student outcomes or academic achievement after the switch to a private school, scholarship awards by family household income, the share of tuition offset by the scholarship, the school district where the scholarship recipient currently resides, the school that the student attended in the year prior to the scholarship award, whether the students denied the ETC scholarship attended the school regardless. Now, some of these were added in Act 33 of 2023. They were added, and the data that you collect is now a little broader, and they're supposed to be a report issued in December of this year. Is that correct? But all of these data are not collected, just some portion of them.

I'm going to punt over to Mr. O'Donnell.

Okay. So what's really helpful about this is that I want to dispel some of the notions that we have here. Even with those changes the legislature enacted, I want to be clear, none of this has anything to do with the administration. You are following the letter of the law, and I get that, and I respect that. But we still, even with this new data, we have no idea if a student who leaves one school district and goes to another school, if that kid's actually doing better. We have no idea, right? Like, there's no way for us to monitor that. Even with this additional information, which, again, begs the question, what if they're doing worse in that school? Are we to continue to fund that kid doing worse? I'm not really sure if that makes a lot of sense from our perspective. Certainly, we should be concerned about that. Do we have any details or data about the academic performance of these private schools?

Okay. And I'm guessing Office of Budget doesn't either. So we could be taking a – now, we went through this with the cyber schools. where the largest cyber school has 95% of their students can't pass basic math. And we were, but we're at least able to track that that school is the most underperforming publicly funded school in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania But we don have commiserate data for million That not true because I have to take out the EIOs But the plus million of funding that going to these schools we have no idea if these schools are even good. Right? That seems like a problem that we're funding all these schools. Again, more than we're funding the entire Department of Agriculture for that as a problem. So we're not allowed to do it because the legislature collectively has said we actually prefer to not know. what's actually happening. That seems dumb. I want to keep my focus on students before I get to the tax credit information. One of the programs, several of the programs, and we've heard some members talk about it benefits economically disadvantaged students, but that's unclear because what we know is they come from, or at least we assume they're coming from economically disadvantaged school districts or otherwise underperforming school districts. Is that correct?

Okay. So it could be a rich kid that's from Philadelphia.

Okay. And we don't actually – it could be a rich kid from Philadelphia that went from

Correct. Okay. So maybe it's helping a poor kid do better in a school, which is fantastic. We're not opposed to kids doing better. I want to be clear about that. We just want to make sure that the dollars that we're investing in is to make sure that we're targeting those students that we're trying to improve their life and make sure that the dollars that we're spending are actually being effective. We have no way to know that. What happens? Now, I like to talk about Philadelphia and Lower Marion. They're separated by a road. Lower Marion is one of the wealthiest school districts in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is one of the poorest. If a kid is in, if a student, even if they are wealthy, lives in Philadelphia and they get the OSTC scholarship to go on to some private school, and then the family moves across the street into Lower Marion, does that tax credit still follow that kid even though they're no longer eligible? Do we have any way of tracking where the students actually live?

The student maintains OSTC eligibility. Are there any original residency things? Is there any reason for me to believe that we have any checks on any potential? I'm not accusing families of any misgivings or any misdoings, but did the student have to live in an economically disadvantaged school district for any period of time before they became eligible?

Okay. So all of our school districts for charter schools have investigatory ways of making sure that the child that's going to a brick-and-mortar charter school, for example, still lives in their district. That way the sending district knows whether or not they're actually supposed to be paying for that child. But we have no comparative sort of outreach, oversight, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, of something similar because we don't actually know who the students are that are getting the funding.

Interesting you brought up the scholarship organization because I have a deep thought about one of them. But what are their requirements to tell you that that's actually happening? In regards to a student relocating?

No, that is not a requirement that they would tell us. So how can we trust them? Fair enough. I won't ask you to answer that. I'll say that rhetorically. So we are putting our trust in the hands of nonprofit organizations who are selling tax credits or brokering tax credits or helping individuals or businesses get tax credits and saying, trust us, this is cool. This is going to be fine. Okay. Again, I'll let you go on that. I want to move off of the students because I think I don't want to lose sight of – I wanted to start on the focus on the students because I'll speak only for myself. Our goal has always been to invest in kids. And if it costs $1,000 or $100,000 to invest in a kid, we're going to do that. But we want to make sure that the dollars are being spent appropriately and that we're actually, again, getting what we're paying for. So we started with that, with the conversation about the kids. I want to talk about the tax credits a little bit. And I don't know, Stacey, if this is for you or for the Office of Revenue or DCED, but is it fair to say that businesses or SPEs, which are individuals posing as a business or filing paperwork to be able to qualify for this as a business, I'm not alluding to any malintent, that are getting this.

That would be correct.

And so if their tax liability is – I'm just making up numbers because math is not my strong point, as I think everybody on this committee will know. So if their Pennsylvania tax liability is $10,000, They do a $10,000 contribution to a scholarship organization or to an OSTC-eligible school. They're paying $1,000 in taxes. The other $9,000 – well, they're still paying $10,000, but they're saying that $9,000 of it, to represent a frills point, isn't going to health care or isn't going to fill a pothole or isn't going to a public school. It's going to that school, right?

And the other 10% that they're not directing their taxes for, that would kind of be considered a contribution. Is that like tax deductible on a federal level?

Cool. Because I think it's fair for us to dispel the notion that individuals are – I'm not saying that it's not a good thing for them or for their businesses or for the special purpose entities or whatever to do this. But let's be honest. They're really just directing tax dollars, right? They may be contributing over and above, and that's fantastic. We certainly love when folks contribute to charities. I do it as well. I write my $150 check-a-thon every year to make sure that some additional research for kids with cancer. But that initial part that is EITC eligible is really just a direction of tax dollars. It's a way for folks to tell us how to spend dollars.

Thank you. So I'm going to stop here because I know we're running 10 minutes beyond for the next panel. I genuinely appreciate it. But I think it's extraordinarily illuminating to understand what we're actually talking about here. This is directed tax dollars. This isn't necessarily additional money. it's tax dollars that the commonwealth would otherwise have to be able to do what we wanted to with it or what we felt what our voters have decided uh that we should make those decisions on we have very limited data on the students that are receiving the the scholarship money and most importantly are they actually doing better we have limited information on the schools that are actually receiving that are accepting these kids and uh we spend a whole lot of money to do it so i genuinely appreciate all of your testimony thank you for joining us from arizona i know the time difference is it's a little early there. It's early for some of our members, too. So thank you very much for joining us two hours behind. That's a lesson to all of our members. If she could do it, we could do it. And thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and ask panel two to start joining us. I'm going to put my glasses back on so I can actually see who they are. We are joined by attorney Jed Silversmith, who's the director of the Montgomery County Scholarships Incorporated, otherwise known, I think, as the Friends of Education. But I'm sure you, sir, will correct me if I'm wrong. I have no doubt that people like to correct me when I'm wrong. Mr. Paolo Zambi is the head of school for Imani Christian Academy. And Ms. Shannon Fagotti, who's the executive director of the Baum School of Art, who is an EIO from the great city of Allentown. And I'm going to emphasize great in Allentown for that. Thank you all for joining us today. Again, same rules apply, folks. If you'll be so kind, please give us a summary of your testimony. We don't need you read it all to us. But if you could give us a summary and we'll turn it over to questions for members. So Mr. Silversmith, if you'll be so kind, sir.

The way we work is individuals sign our paperwork, they enroll, they write a capital contribution or a donation to their preferred charity. We collect the money. If the money is given to an EIO charity, we distribute it within 60 days of what the state calls an award letter, and it goes right to the EIO charity, and then we process the paperwork on the back end to ensure that the donor gets their tax credit. If the money goes to a private school it goes to what we called a scholarship organization The scholarship organization then collects data from the private schools which the private schools certified us as accurate and then we remit the gifts to the private schools consistent with the data that they provide to us. We think the speech structure is an effective way to work because it allows individuals to participate. It allows less individuals and charities to sort of interface with the state because we've learned that DCED does have a limited staff. And by working through us, you know, we sort of can – we sort of – you know, we deal with the individuals. And then if it's a problem, we can address it usually. And if necessary, then we can escalate it. And, you know, we think the program works. Just a couple other points that I think were not touched on earlier. You know, there was a lot of discussion about EIO funding. I think that that's just a significantly different animal than SO funding, and especially Representative Probst. I mean, you know, that funding is directed directly to public schools, including school district foundations throughout the state. The other thing that I think the committee should be aware of is that there have been changes to the federal tax law on charitable deductions both by businesses and individuals. And we believe, and we don't have any data to support this, but I think it's widely believed, that as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there is going to be substantially less charitable giving that's going to impact both private schools and these EIO charities. So one thing to think about in terms of this program is if you cut it, these organizations are going to take hits in other ways as a result of that legislation. The OBBA, O-Triple BA, I should say, enacted a federal tax credit. One of the representatives earlier touched on that. You know, we think Pennsylvania should opt into that program. That's a decision I think that needs to be made at the governor's level, not at the state house level or state legislature level. That program's a little different in terms of how it's administered, but we think it could pair particularly well here. And as I say in my written remarks, we think it actually might increase the amount of money going to private schools without necessarily increasing the cost of the state because of the way the two programs are going to work together. I don't know that. That's just my sense of how the programs work, but I certainly think that's something that's worth exploring. The final thing that I think is worth mentioning, it's changed again slightly due to the OBBBA and certainly but it's certainly true with all these SO all these tax credit gifts and certainly the EIO tax credit gifts this sort of structure the state's created works as what's essentially a work around for the $10,000 now $40,000 limitation on state and local tax deductions that individuals pay and so one of the things to consider, particularly in terms of funding EIO gifts, is that by pouring money into the EIO credits, you save Pennsylvania taxpayers money on their federal return because they get essentially what I call a salt workaround that's been blessed by the IRS. Thank you.

Chairman Swire, Chairman Cutler, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify before the Pennsylvania House Education Committee regarding the importance of the EITC tax credit programs EITC OSTC and EDS My name is Paul Lewinzambi I the head of school for Imani Christian Academy a private pre through 12th grade school located in the East Hills of Pittsburgh that sits adjacent to two subsidized housing developments Imani's mission is to embrace all children, especially the underserved, transforming them academically, socially, physically, and spiritually to pursue lives of purpose and contribution. Each year, Imani has approximately 150 to 170 students who hail from the neighborhoods that have historically experienced intransigent poverty and transgenerational underinvestment. These include the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of the East Hills and Homewood and the municipalities of Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, and Woodland Hills. According to the most recent census, the medium household income of the East Hills of Pittsburgh is $25,000 per year, and the unemployment rate is approximately twice the rate of the city of Pittsburgh. Many of our students come from single-parent households. Additionally, based upon our student demographics, all students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. As a purpose-driven school, we do our best to prepare our students to succeed in the next phase of life. For some, that will be university or college, but for others, it may mean the trades, military service, or the workforce. Year on year, we have graduated 100% of our senior class on time. 100% of our seniors are accepted to college, and for the last two years, 100% of the class has enrolled in university or college. This educational opportunity is made possible because Imani is eligible to receive tax credits through the EITC, OST, and EDS programs. Tuition at Imani Christian Academy is $18,000 per year. But our families pay $1,650 for the first child and $400 for each additional child. The tax credits provide scholarships that help to address a portion of the delta between the parent contribution and the actual amount of tuition. What remains is addressed through Imani's fundraising efforts. These credits made it possible for families of modest means to access holistic education that they would otherwise not be able to afford. Importantly, these resources provide our parents with the right to choose the educational destiny of their children. I am reminded of a promising young man currently in high school who has attended Imani since elementary school. He happens to live in the subsidized housing adjacent to the school with his grandmother. His grandmother chose to send him to Imani because unfortunately many of the schools that he might have attended were identified by the state as low performing. In addition, neither she or he felt that the options accessible to him provided him a safe environment to grow and learn. This is an experience that is shared by many of our families and students. The tax credit programs free them to select the school of their choice. It liberates them from being forced to sacrifice safety and accept underperformance simply because they live in a specific zip code. Imani appreciates the opportunity to provide them with the freedom to exercise their educational choice. We also appreciate the meaningful avenue out of poverty that these tax credits create for our students. I thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and at this time, I'm pleased to respond to any questions you may have.

Hi, my name is Shannon Fugate. I'm here on behalf of the Baum School of Art in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We are a non-profit community visual arts school that has served the Lehigh Valley for 100 years, and we are an educational improvement organization. We serve over 4,000 students annually from young children taking their first art class to adults returning to creative practice later in life, and we offer classes in art, design, and fashion for children, teens and adults. We hold accreditation through the Accrediting Commission for Community and Precollegiate Art Schools and this accreditation affirms that our instruction programming meets the highest national standards for quality, rigor, and student outcomes in the arts. This year we're proud to celebrate our centennial, 100 years of serving our community, and we really do believe that creative education is important for everyone and we've worked to earn the trust of our community over 100 years. It's not by accident. Recently we completed a significant building renovation adding over 5,000 square feet of space and renovating our existing 25,000 square foot building in downtown Allentown and it's a direct response to the years of growing enrollment and increase in demand for our programs. And this renovation positions us to serve more students and offer a broader range of programming and it allows us to to evolve and continue to meet the needs of our community. Allentown is a diverse, working class city where close to one in three children lives in poverty. Many of the kids who come to our programs are navigating real hardship, economic stress at home, learning English as a second language, and searching for somewhere they feel like they belong. Through our approved programs as well as after school prep, after school classes, summer camps, school partnerships, and financial aid, we reach over a thousand students annually who would not otherwise have access to quality arts education. Community outreach has been part of our mission since the school was founded, and since then we have connected with tens of thousands of students across Allentown's most under-resourced neighborhoods. Students build confidence, resilience, and skills that otherwise might be difficult to achieve in other learning environments. There's solid research behind this. Students who participate in arts education tend to show better academic performance stronger problem-solving skills and lower rates of chronic absenteeism. For kids in lower-income communities, access to the arts often opens the door to broader engagement in school. Arts education is practical education. The skills students develop in a studio, attention, persistence, the ability to take feedback and revise, clear visual communication, these are exactly the skills employers across every industry say they need. We do not believe that what we do is separate from workforce development. For many students, arts education builds foundational skills for future success. The funding we receive through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit as an EIO is one of the key components of growing our outreach programming to our community, and it incentivizes the business community's investment in arts education and allows them to support the development of creativity. And it creates critical opportunities for partnership between private and nonprofit sectors. Allentown has seen a large reinvestment in downtown recent years and cultural institutions are part of what makes a city worth inhabiting and attracting investment. The bomb school draws people into the community, supports neighboring businesses, and contributes to the kind of environment that families and employers find desirable. Appreciate the time to talk with you today We do appreciate the support that we receive through the EITC It is not the sole support. We do receive a lot of private dollars as well

I think this is the kind of hearings that we need to have where we have panels and testifiers from all different perspectives. And I think that's a really good way to handle this. I want to just clear up something as these hearings go on and on, because really this is about school choice versus just public school. I think all of us, hopefully, all we want is an even playing field. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And I think we engage, we get caught up sometimes in this one or the other mentality. but if we have an even playing field we really should and we say here's the rules for this group here's the expectations for this group here's the funding for this group I guess for me fair minded we should have the same expectations for everybody we should have the same academic expectations how people use their use their money and for me this is only about kids I'll be honest with you that's it be fiscally responsible. Certainly we can't jeopardize our kids' future, but that's not just with education when it comes to fiscal policy. That comes to fiscal policy with every single thing that we do. So, but this is about students. I want to get rid of some of the narratives because we around here often focus on narratives instead of what is true. So this doesn't impact public school. EITC is not going to destroy public school. It's not going to hurt public school. In fact, what I always use in Florida as probably the most robust school choice system in the country, 85% of the kids still go to brick-and-mortar public schools. It hasn't destroyed public schools. It has made public schools better. But I want to specifically focus on Imani because your story, I went and read your story. It is absolutely incredible. We heard that this program is going to lead to the have and have nots, which is simply just I don't understand that argument at all. But I'll ask you, is Imani, are they serving rich kids or what kind of kids do we serve? And I know you mentioned it, but are they serving wealthy kids? Are they serving primarily kids that are underserved and disadvantaged?

So I would ask Adam Mani, I know you talked a little bit about your success academically. Could you kind of expand on that? If you're bragging on your school, how would that stand up to the other schools in your area?

My follow-up question to that is then, how many students do you have that attend Amani?

So Imani via EITC, because without EITC, Imani would not be possible for these families.

That is a correct statement, sir. So we keep talking about how do we know. We could probably have a lot of Imanis here, and we would know. I think there's more. Your story's great, and there's other stories out there. But we know at Imani specifically, we have 150 almost exclusively underprivileged at-risk kids, like you said, however you want to describe it, who came from failing schools, have been academically successful, has great opportunity for success. because remember we're focusing this on kids. 150 kids that were, and I'll say it this way, saved from a life of non-opportunity and because of Imani and EITC have opportunity they wouldn't have otherwise had. Is that correct?

The last thing that I want to address is the corporation's narrative. Would Imani, would the EITC program or Imani be in business if it weren't for generous donors from corporations or other private institutions?

So regardless of your ideology on big bad corporations, I would suggest to the other 261,000 nonprofit educational organizations, regardless of their ideology, would also not exist. and to apply the idea, remember applying everything fairly, that somehow this is benefiting corporations and the corporations, we shouldn't do this because of corporations, then we wouldn't have the United Way, we wouldn't have the YWCA, we wouldn't have Wounded Warriors, and we wouldn't have the hundreds of thousands of other charities. So that's not a bad thing that the private sector is investing in education. In fact, I was just at Penn Tech a few weeks ago, and what they bragged about just met with Harrisburg University students this morning. And the things that they're very proud of was that partnerships with businesses and community organizations that make their education better. And I will finish with this one thing. If we are going to connect funding to performance, I'm all for it. I think we move ahead. All for it. Let's connect funding to Imani. And then let's connect funding to the eight schools. There are eight schools in the state of Pennsylvania that do not have one kid proficient in math and reading. So let's apply the same, because what we hear all the time is, well, if we give those eight schools more money, they'll be okay. We give them a lot of money. So let's take that standard and move forward. I'm more than happy to do so. We can go across and talk to Senator Williams, who has repeatedly said, I have voted for every spending increase in the history of my career. But I'm done because the high school in his neighborhood is the high school that does not have proficient students when they graduate. Kudos to Imani, kudos to schools like yours that have decided to do something about it, regardless of the politics, regardless of the ideology. Thank you for focusing on kids. Thank you, sir.

Okay, thank you. I'm sorry. I'm going to be real quick, but I'm going to have to answer something because my question now has to be premised, and that is this hearing today wasn't about we're getting rid of EITC. It was about finding out information about it. I voted for increased funding. My kids went to a Catholic school, so I understand how it all works. But we, in this tax credit situation, we've kind of abdicated our legislative job of allotting money, which is what we were elected here to do, and we're allowing companies to direct the money that we're supposed to be directing. So we're trying to find out information. So undoing that, that's where I come at this, is trying to be fact-finding. And one thing that's really struck me is where you're located and what you talked about. Monty, I'm sorry. I'm just directing this to you. With regard to your student population being underprivileged, shall we say? Would you be able to enroll more students if there was more money accessible, say, through OSTC rather than just the EITC? Because you're kind of competing with people who obviously have a higher income situation than it sounds like most of your students. If we had more money available through OSTC, would you be able to increase the population?

No, no, like I said, we're at a fact-finding. The point that we're making with that is we have been funding, as I pointed out earlier, I don't know if you were here, but we have been increasing and increasing exorbitantly the amount of money that goes into the EITC, higher than we've been increasing what goes to the OSTC. And so I want to make sure that everyone understands where I'm coming at this from in this fact-finding that we're doing, not sitting here trying to say what we're trying to abolish something, because that's not what the purpose of this hearing is, nor is it how I came to this. I take my responsibilities on this committee just as seriously as everybody else does, and whether I agree with people or not, I'm trying to learn so that we can make sure that if we are funding these programs, that it's getting to those who can benefit from it the most. As you said, you don't have a high school any longer in the community. We want to make sure that all children are educated. Could I just ask, following up on our last panel and then I'll be done, would you have any problem or would there be such a burden to start reporting information so that we, whether it's the executive branch or us as the legislative branch, could find out more about your students, how they're performing, and how the money is being, that should be coming to the Commonwealth directly as tax dollars, but is not and is being diverted, would there be a problem of reporting so that we understand that money that was supposed to be ours is being utilized correctly.

No. Okay, thank you.

Do you ask for success?

I don't have a, certainly I don't have a problem with that. The only question I would have, and it's not for me to answer, it's more for the people who report back to me, the CFOs of the schools, you know, how do you aggregate that data? So when I ask for financial aid data, they can pull that from their financial aid systems. I don't know that that necessarily ties in with grade average. And I do think there might be federal education restrictions on disclosing that information. I don't know that under FERPA. But in principle, am I opposed to it? Absolutely not. In practice, I don't know how easy that would be, that last step of academic success. Okay, thank you.

today as well. Certainly appreciated hearing about the great work you're doing on Imani. So thank you for that. I think it's meaningful and impactful. And to Ms. Fugate, I want to thank you for your school. As someone who has zero art talent and zero music talent, I do appreciate the education that comes from learning all of those skills. So thank you for opening up those opportunities for so many people. And Mr. Silversmith, I want to thank you for coming. I can only imagine what it's like to regulate and straddle the state and federal differences amongst all of this. That's actually the basis of my first question, which is you alluded to the big, beautiful bill and the federal income tax. I've urged our governor to opt in early. What benefits or concerns do you have if we miss that window in terms of administering the tax credits?

Closing comments, Mr. Chairman? Sure. I want to thank all the testifiers for coming today. I certainly don't think that this is, you know, that unusual. I appreciate Chair Schwyer bringing this up because we actually do agree on the issues of oversight and outcomes. We differ a little bit in terms of our approach. As I indicated earlier, I'm a full supporter of the EITC and the OSTC and the work that's being done in this world and the work that is being done in the EIOs because I think it's very, very important in terms of opening up those opportunities. A couple things that I think that while we talk about numbers here and we talk about the budgets, here's the reality. We already have the seventh highest cost per student that we allocate for.

Appreciate it and doing our best to get us out here on time. I'm not going to do that. Get us out on time. So sorry for everyone. But I do understand that session begins at 11. And if members need to run to the floor, I certainly understand and respect that. And I appreciate folks bearing with me. And I appreciate the three of you very, very much. But I do have some very specific questions for you all. Shannon, we'll start with you. And Chairman, if you ever want to see a cool kiln, their kilns are awesome. My youngest daughter loved the ceramics class at Baum School. The students, and I'm only talking about the population that are EITC, right? I don't want to conflate your adult students, your private pay students, folks that are supported through other charitable contributions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have a pretty good idea of who these kids are?

Okay. Tell me who they are.

Right.

Okay. And so as you – now, you are not replacing a traditional – and EIOs don't replace traditional public schools.

So asking you for things like, you know, improving on standardized tests doesn't make any sense because you're not actually that kind of provider of academic supports, correct?

Okay. And so the justification that Baum School, and I would say all EIOs, and Jen, please feel free to correct me on that, for the reason why you deserve investment is at the very onset when the Department of Community Economic Development identifies you as an EIO or gives you that, you have to justify what supports you're providing to, to students by being innovative, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay. All right. Conversely, um, uh, Apollo, if I may, your ability to – you are replacing a traditional public school setting for your students. So you are – there is an apples-and-apples comparison to the achievement of a particular student if they would be in the Pittsburgh School District versus Imani. Is that a fair assumption to make? And you can disagree with me, and that's why I'm asking the question.

So I want to start with apologies. For Imani specifically, what do you look at when you go to admit a kid?

How much of those follow-up to that, how many of that one-week trial period does Amani ever tell the kid this isn't the right spot for you?

But you don't do it? Okay. Do you have any restrictions on race, religion, creed, sexual orientation,

No, we don't discriminate.

What about a pregnant girl?

Would you tell a pregnant child that they can't come to your school?

Okay, but there's no high school in the neighborhood, right?

Fair enough. So, you came and testified before us, which I genuinely appreciate, and Jed, same with you sir because your colleagues won necessarily do this I hope you realize that Jed are you aware who the largest scholarship organization in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is I am yeah It not you is it No it not Okay so let me tell you when we did ask the largest scholarship organization Blocks to testify we actually built the timing of this

So, Jed, I want to congratulate you for at least being open and honest and saying, you know, yeah, this is state money that we're talking about here. And I think language matters. You and I are going to disagree over the word gifts. I don't think it's a gift. It's directed state tax money, but we can disagree on semantics. But I applaud you for having the backbone to actually have a difficult conversation with the appropriators as opposed to, I don't know, the largest organization in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So congratulations to you on that. The schools that you work with, now we've heard a very good testimony about blocks. We've heard a very good testimony about bomb school. When you are working with, and I'm going to cite EITC and OSTC recipient schools, not EIOs for a second. Do you ever, does your organization ask the question of whether or not a school would, say, deny access to a kid who happens to be of the Islamic faith?

Have any of the, I'll use your words, donors, have any of the participants on it have ever asked those questions?

all. Yeah and I appreciate that because for both of you I think one of the real challenges that we have again we don't know where these kids are going to school we could look it up on a spreadsheet somewhere. Based on your public reporting, I looked at one SO from Altoona who was very happy to use this as a way of trying to promote his business, and I'm not criticizing his business, but that was the way he was promoting it. But again, we don't actually know.

But there are ways to anonymize this information to be able to verify these things.

And I should cabin that.

Okay. And, Paulo, if I may, sir, when you are talking about the success rate for your students, you talk about graduation rates.

But that's not a requirement for us to know for any of the students that are actually graduating. I'm not criticizing. None of this is geared towards you. So if a scholarship organization or independent of a scholarship organization, a large private school that has the ability to solicit donations and do those things, we don't know if those kids are actually graduating.

We have no data. Oh, no.

Right. The students enrolled in September.

Well, I would say, you know, in one instance, and we tell schools they have to do this, one instance we've had a school come back and say there was a student on our report.

It would be really cool if the cyber schools did the same, but that was for hearings last year. And neither here nor there. That was mostly for the audience and certainly not for Chair Cutler, who still has PTSD from those hearings. The question of whether or not your kid is doing better. We've had multiple hearings. To be clear, we are holding public schools to the same standard that we are. We've done it with cyber schools. We're doing it with public schools. We have the Future Ready Index program, which is not perfect. I don't know that any metric is ever perfect when we're looking at student achievement anywhere in the United States. But we have a metric that we're able to compare relative growth, improvement of school districts. Are you graduating kids at a higher level? Are they ready for the workforce, military, or college? Are they proficient in math and science and English? If they're not, are the schools, even if the school may be underneath the proficiency level, we can see if they're getting better or relatively worse to where they were. And we do that through the keystones and the PSSAs. Help me, sir, with the private schools, because my kids go to public school. I haven't been in private schools since 1992 because I'm 143 years old. Approximately, how do you test the students? What are your requirements to report that up to the Commonwealth? And how would we be able is there a way for us to do an apples comparison And I only asking you about Imani It not fair for you to ask for about any of the eight gazillion other private schools that are in the common law Yeah we don take the same test We do do standardized testing on our students to assess

actually are looking for apples to apples comparison between the twos. We can't even look at the same data to see. We could ask a kid if they're happier in one area or not. We could see if we're on a path to graduation versus not. We could look at their attendance records and their delinquent students, et cetera, et cetera. We could look at criminal records. We could look at all kinds of stuff, but we don't have the same data for data storage. You also don't have the

I believe we're set up differently, yes. Okay. So this is why this program is challenging for us, because we are talking about public tax dollars. We're not talking about, you know, if I choose to give my alma mater a $1,000 gift out of my income tax and I'll get the standard deduction from the federal government and what have you, which may be going down, as we heard. But, you know, that's a gift. But me saying I'm going to use, you know, $5,000 of my tax dollars to go to that is a directed tax, up to 90% of it is a directed tax. So this is why it's hard for us to talk about the effectiveness of the program. I have no doubt that it is extremely effective in helping a whole lot of students that are looking for a different opportunity. And we support those kids, too. I have no doubt that it's extraordinarily helpful in allowing these schools to stay open, which I want to be clear, is extremely important to us. We don't want to see a mass closing of non-traditional public schools or non-public schools. That's not our goal here. We just want to make sure that the schools are actually performing, that what we're funding is working for us, and that we have accountability over it. as each and every year. Last year, we put more money in this program than we did special education in terms of growth. We had $50 million more for EITC, only $40 million more for special education for the 90% of other kids that go to school in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So some of this is a check on the legislature to make sure that we have the facts so that we can make better decisions. And unlike some of your colleagues in the private school funding ecosystem that's out there, I applaud the three of you for joining us today. I am not going to have any more closing remarks. We're already running late, but thank you all for joining us very, very much. I am going to ask, if you're willing, if we have further questions or correspondence from our teams, our staff, our members, and I want to be clear, this applies for my colleagues on the Republican side as well. If anybody's willing to answer them, I'd genuinely appreciate that. So thank you all for joining us. Thank you, sir, and thank you to the staff.

Thank you.