With the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program now entering its second year and data on the results of year one publicly available, state legislative leaders say they are pleased with the results, which show the program is making private school a viable option for low-income and middle-class families across the state.

“The majority of that money has gone to the lower income status,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle. “It’s working exactly as we planned.”

As with public schools, the school-choice program is available to all families in Oklahoma. Unlike public schools, however, the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides greater benefit to families from the lowest income levels.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition with the largest credits going to those with the lowest income.

The program has five income brackets: Families earning up to $75,000 can receive a $7,500 per-child refundable tax credit; those earning $75,001 to $150,000 get a credit of $7,000 per child; families with income between $150,001 to $225,000 qualify for a $6,500 credit; those earning $225,001 to $250,000 receive a $6,000 credit; and those earning $250,001 and up qualify for a credit of $5,000 per child.

Because the total amount of credits that can be provided was capped at $150 million in year one before rising to $250 million annually, preference is given to families in the two lowest income brackets.

A recent report released by the Oklahoma Tax Commission shows that the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program has benefited far more children from the lowest income category than children whose families are in the highest income bracket.

The number of children served by the program from families with incomes below $75,000 was 35 percent greater than the number of beneficiaries from families earning more than $250,000.

Overall, 60 percent of children benefiting from the program were from families in the two lowest-income brackets (those with incomes below $150,000) and nearly 80 percent of children came from families outside the top bracket of more than $250,000.

Parents recently rallied at the Oklahoma Capitol to thank policymakers for creating the program. Several speakers noted that the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program had made private school financially viable for their children.

Collin Griffin said he and his wife have income below $50,000 per year and had gone into debt to pay tuition for their oldest child to attend the private school they felt best met her needs. When their second child reached school age, the family’s ability to pay for both children to attend appeared out of reach.

However, the school-choice program became law at that time, allowing both children to receive a private education today.

“We were overjoyed,” Griffin said. “Finally, it seemed like we had a path for our daughters to get the educations they deserved without driving our family deeper into debt.”

That hasn’t stopped opponents from complaining and even appearing to suggest that families with over $75,000 in income are effectively “rich.”

During debate on Senate Bill 684, a Paxton bill that makes some technical changes to the tax-credit program, Democratic lawmakers attacked the program.

“We just received data that more than 70 percent of the voucher money spent this spring semester went to families making $75,000 a year and up with nearly 21 percent of the vouchers making more than $250,000,” said state Sen. Carri Hicks, D-Oklahoma City.

State Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, proclaimed lawmakers should be “concerned” about “who’s accessing these programs, the wealth level of the people accessing this money.”

Gov. Kevin Stitt, who attended the pro-school choice rally, subsequently noted that the event was attended by “regular working families, very middle class, the poor families, coming up to me, thanking me for this opportunity that they have to send their kids to the school of their choice.”

If school choice tax credits were limited to households with annual adjusted gross income of less than $75,000, as Democrats appear to now suggest, nearly six in 10 joint-filing households in Oklahoma would be excluded from the program, based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data from 2022, the most recent available.

IRS data shows that just 43 percent of joint filers in Oklahoma had adjusted gross income of less than $75,000.

And in the recent past, Democrats defined “rich” at a much higher level.

In 2019, the Oklahoma House Democratic caucus unveiled a budget proposal that included tax increases on what they defined as the wealthy at that time. At a press conference discussing the proposal, then-House Democratic Leader Emily Virgin of Norman said, “Our wealthier citizens are not paying their fair share.”

The Democrat’s 2019 budget plan included a top personal income tax rate of 7 percent on joint-filing parents with income above $400,000. Adjusted for inflation, that figure equates to more than $500,000 today.

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, appeared amused by some attacks on the school-choice program.

“It’s funny: Different people look at the same data and come to different conclusions,” Hilbert said. “I look at it where it said 79 percent of the funds were not going to the wealthy individuals—so the program’s doing what it was intended to do.”