Public Money goes through back door to Christian private schools..."shell game"

By Stephanie Saul, New York Times, May 21, 2012
When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy.
The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to the Georgia treasury — about $50 million a year — would be used instead to help needy students escape struggling public schools.
That was the idea, at least. But parents meeting at Gwinnett Christian Academy got a completely different story last year.
“A very small percentage of that money will be set aside for a needs-based scholarship fund,” Wyatt Bozeman, an administrator at the school near Atlanta, said during an informational session. “The rest of the money will be channeled to the family that raised it.”
A handout circulated at the meeting instructed families to donate, qualify for a tax credit and then apply for a scholarship for their own children, many of whom were already attending the school.
“If a student has friends, relatives or even corporations that pay Georgia income tax, all of those people can make a donation to that child’s school,” added an official with a scholarship group working with the school.
The exchange at Gwinnett Christian Academy, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, is just one example of how scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.
Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools, the programs are operating in eight states and represent one of the fastest-growing components of the school choice movement. This school year alone, the programs redirected nearly $350 million that would have gone into public budgets to pay for private school scholarships for 129,000 students, according to the Alliance for School Choice, an advocacy organization. Legislators in at least nine other states are considering the programs.
While the scholarship programs have helped many children whose parents would have to scrimp or work several jobs to send them to private schools, the money has also been used to attract star football players, expand the payrolls of the nonprofit scholarship groups and spread the theology of creationism, interviews and documents show. Even some private school parents and administrators have questioned whether the programs are a charade.
Most of the private schools are religious. Nearly a quarter of the participating schools in Georgia require families to make a profession of religious faith, according to their Web sites. Many of those schools adhere to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity. A commonly used sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis, omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist — a world ruler predicted in the New Testament — will one day control what is bought and sold.
The programs are insulated from provisions requiring church-state separation because the donations are collected and distributed by the nonprofit scholarship groups.
A cottage industry of these groups has sprung up, in some cases collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative fees, according to tax filings. The groups often work in concert with private schools like Gwinnett Christian Academy to solicit donations and determine who will get the scholarships — in effect limiting school choice for the students themselves. In most states, students who withdraw from the schools cannot take the scholarship money with them.
Public school officials view the tax credits as poorly disguised state subsidies, part of an expanding agenda to shift tax dollars away from traditional public schools. “Our position is that this is a shell game,” said Chris Thomas, general counsel for the Arizona School Boards Association.
Calling this scam a "shell game" is an understatement.
It is a duplicitous scheme to generate the core of a theocracy, and those who can should apply for injunctions in the eight states in which it is operating.
Like the super-pac's that can, without worry about crossing some "ethical" line, pour truckloads of cash into the campaign of a chosen candidate, (thanks to the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United), these "groups" are at arms length, permitted by state law, and endorsed by a tax credit that in real time funds the private schools of the christian right.
Are the people of these eight states aware of what is going on in their jurisdiction?
If they are aware, are they planning to find legal counsel to block the operation of these groups?
If they are aware, and, after petitioning their state representatives, find a deaf ear, are they prepared to recall those representatives that have already supported this scam?
If they are not ready to draw a line in the sand, against this duplicity that operates under the guise of the "aid to poor students" banner, while funding the students already attending the christian private schools, then they will have to be held accountable when their state legislature is held hostage by those same students whose education they are currently subsidizing.
This kind of religious hypocrisy is so heinous and so deeply embedded in the U.S. culture, in some parts of the country, that it will require more weeding than most farmers will have to do this year to ensure the growth of their crops.