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Most of the efforts for public schools to get in on a new federal tax credit have been macro: Public education boosters are creating organizations to grant scholarships for tutoring or SAT prep across an entire school district, state, or region of the country.
But a new effort in Denver is micro. Here, parents are launching an organization to grant scholarships at just three public schools: East High, Morey Middle, and McAuliffe International.
“The general concept is as a parent, if I’m going to give a donation, I’d like to see it impact my neighborhood school,” said East High parent Greg Graeber.
This type of experimentation and parental choice is allowed under the federal tax credit program, a major school choice expansion that’s projected to raise billions of dollars for private school tuition and other educational expenses. The program works like this: Taxpayers will receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 if they donate to a scholarship-granting organization. Those organizations then give money to qualifying students.
But what seems to the parents at East High, Morey Middle, and McAuliffe International like an enterprising way to help their local schools is also one of the biggest fears raised by critics of the program: If parents with the means to donate give only to their kids’ schools, many students from low-income families won’t benefit.
“What that’s going to do is it’s going to steer money away from communities that are most in need and toward communities that already have the most resources,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
All three Denver schools serve a population that’s whiter and wealthier than the district as a whole, though it would be a stretch to call them rich. That also means the schools get less money per student under the district’s equity-based formula. The parents behind the effort want to make up some of that gap and help more students afford after-school and summer programs.
“It’s those things — the extras, the after-school things, the weekend things… that are making a huge difference in the outcome for that child,” said Sara Peters, a mother of three children who attend Denver Public Schools. “You can’t understate the possibility of it.”
Heather Lamm, an East High alum whose youngest daughter is a freshman there, understands the equity conundrum well because she previously worked for a Denver charter school network that primarily serves low-income students. But she said she believes the three-school approach is still worth a try, in part because it could serve as a test case.
“The worry that wealthier communities will capture more of this money is fair, and I worry about that too,” Lamm said. “But it’s easier to learn and cheaper to fix with three schools than 30. So let’s figure out how this can be replicated to schools that might not be as fortunate.”
States must opt in to the tax credit program. Republican governors have been eager. Democrats have hesitated. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is an exception. One of the first Democrats to sign on, he has been working to get the pieces in place for Colorado to take advantage when the program starts on Jan. 1. Governor-elect Phil Weiser, who will take power in January, has said he’s a “firm no” on the program, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to opt Colorado out for 2027.
At least three Colorado public school groups are starting scholarship-granting organizations, including the Denver Public Schools Foundation, whose effort could benefit all 89,000 students in the district. But the parents at East High, Morey Middle, and McAuliffe International believe a more localized approach could have legs. They’re calling their three-school scholarship-granting organization the Denver Neighborhood Education Fund.
Graeber, an East High alum whose daughter is a senior, said he began researching the federal program after Polis opted in. Graeber is president of the East Angel Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for the school, and he wondered if the program could help.
When he realized that the rules required scholarship-granting organizations to benefit multiple schools, he reached out to parents at McAuliffe and Morey, middle schools that feed into East.
“I had kids who went to private school before East, so I know how much of an advantage they had coming into East, and it breaks my heart,” Graeber said. “My first inclination is that we’ll have a stronger high school system if we have a stronger junior high system.”
Peters runs a similar foundation at McAuliffe and was excited about the idea. The McAuliffe foundation raises money each year for things like repainting basketball courts, buying teacher appreciation lunches, and covering fees for students to play sports or join after-school clubs, some of which are run by outside organizations and cost up to $200.
Initial federal guidance didn’t answer every question about how the tax credit scholarship can be used, but Peters is hopeful it could help with student-centered expenses. While parents and alumni at the three schools raise tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars each year, the schools also receive relatively less per-pupil funding from the district.
That’s because in Denver, schools with fewer English language learners, students with disabilities, and students who qualify for subsidized school meals, an indicator of poverty, get less money. East High, where just 30% of students qualify for subsidized meals, is getting $8,927 per pupil this year, less than the districtwide average of $11,652.
“All you have to do is look at those numbers,” Graeber said. “Even though we come from wealthier neighborhoods in Denver, our schools are underfunded.”
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
