Rockford Sun

State Rep. Dave Vella (D-Loves Park), a graduate of Boylan Catholic High School, is one of many state legislators who have benefitted from private school education. He, however, appears to not value continuing the Invest In Kids Tax Credit Scholarship program.

Vella voted for the state budget that excluded the program, despite earlier comments in support of it made after meeting with his alma mater in 2021.

At the time, Vella boasted the meeting was a show of support in finding ways to support more needy children through the program.

“This morning I met with Empower Illinois and Boylan Catholic High School to talk about better mechanisms to expand quality education options for low-income and working-class families of Illinois,” Vella said at the time.

Boylan Catholic High School is emphatic in its support of the program which allows students to attend schools that would ordinarily be closed to them. 70% of Boylan graduates go on to success at four-year universities. 

“The Illinois Invest In Kids Act allows parents to choose the best K-12 school for their child. Offering 50-100% in scholarships toward tuition, this makes private schools like Boylan Catholic even more accessible to all families,” Boylan Catholic High School said on Facebook.

Vella is one of 35 of Illinois' 177 state legislators who attended private high schools. The private high school graduates include 10 Republicans and 25 Democrats, 15 of whom were raised in the City of Chicago, according to a survey of legislator education histories by Prairie State Wire. 

The state's $50.5 billion 2024 budget written on 3,500 pages did not include funding needed for the continuation of the Invest In Kids Tax Credit Scholarship Program. The program, which allows donors to receive a tax benefit for donating to a state-maintained scholarship program for private schools for low-income families, serves over 9,000 K-12 students. 

“This is not something that’s been covered by the budget agreement," Gov. Pritzker confirmed in a press conference. "It’s something that still has time, potentially, but it’s not something that’s in the budget agreement.”

Critics highlighted the hypocrisy of lawmakers involved in shutting down the program. Pritzker and other politicians had sent or were sending their own children to expensive private schools while denying the same opportunity to less fortunate students. The main reason behind the opposition to the program was the influence of teachers' unions, who wanted to eliminate it because its popularity highlighted the failures of public schools, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Invest in Kids program received over 31,000 applications last year, indicating a high demand for alternatives to underperforming public schools. Many low-income families, particularly Black and Hispanic, supported the scholarship program because their assigned Illinois schools had low proficiency rates in reading and math.

The failure of the public education system was evident from the fourth to eighth grades, leading to a high demand for alternatives. However, the unions prioritized their power over student learning and blamed the schools' failures on lack of funding, rather than addressing systemic issues. The Wall Street Journal underscored the power dynamics between teachers' unions, Democratic lawmakers, and the failure of the public education system. The decision to end the scholarship program disregarded the needs of low-income students and prioritized the interests of unions over educational reform. WSJ reports union leaders hold significant influence over Illinois lawmakers, who have received substantial campaign contributions from teachers' unions.