In his first budget since taking office, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe proposed allocating $50 million in state funding to a scholarship program for private-school and homeschooled students.
If the proposal is included in the final budget passed by the Missouri General Assembly, fiscal year 2026 will mark the first time the state put general revenue funding toward private schools.
Proponents say the move is necessary to meet growing demand among Missouri families for access to alternative educational options. Opponents say it drains money away from public school students and violates the Missouri Constitution.
Funding the foundation formula
Also included in the governor’s proposed budget — and in the version passed by the Missouri House that is currently being considered by the Senate — is an additional $200 million for the state’s public schools that was included in a major education bill passed last year.
That additional funding falls $300 million short of what the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said it needed to meet the state’s adequacy target, or the minimum amount it says should be spent on each student.
The adequacy target was set at $6,375 per student in 2020 and was frozen at that level for four years. DESE says it should be raised to $7,145 per student in order to meet the state’s educational needs. But Kehoe’s proposal — and the budget bill the House passed — would fund public education at $6,760 per student.
Under those versions of the budget, the state would spend $4 billion on public education in fiscal year 2026.
Critics of the governor’s proposed budget say they’re concerned he is underfunding public education while diverting some of that money directly into private schools.
“We have a statutory obligation to fund the foundation formula, and this version of the budget that the House passed over to the Senate does not meet the minimum statutory obligation that we have to make investments in our children back home,” said Rep. Betsy Fogle, a Springfield Democrat.
“My concerns are twofold. One, for the first time, we’re sending general revenue — your taxpayer dollars — to schools that don’t educate all children. And two, (we’re) not making the investments that this body has promised to our school districts back home,” added Fogle, the ranking minority member on the House Budget Committee.
During budget debates in the House, Fogle presented an amendment to move the $50 million earmarked for the private school scholarship program — called MOScholars — into the foundation formula. It was shot down, with only one Republican representative voting with Democrats.
Fogle said she wasn’t optimistic her amendment would pass, but she was surprised to see how cleanly the vote fell along partisan lines.
“I thought I would have more support from the majority party than I did,” she said. “I think there are a lot of people, especially in our rural communities across the state, who recognize that privatizing education will completely erode the public schools they have in their community.”
Rep. Josh Hurlbert, a Smithville Republican and an advocate for the MOScholars program, said he understands his colleagues’ concerns about the foundation formula. But he thinks the governor’s proposal still does a lot to support public schools.
“I wish the budget committee would have been able to fully fund what DESE thinks they need to hit that target. But at the same time, only in government can you call it a ‘cut’ when you’re getting $200 million more than you did the year before,” he said. “I understand it, but it’s also not like we’re leaving (public) K-12 education on the wayside, either. They’re getting more money than ever to meet their needs for educating 21st-century students.”
Alternative educational opportunities
Hurlbert said investment in public schools is important and something he supports. But he is also a proponent of school choice, as he believes public schools aren’t right for every student.
Hurlbert was homeschooled as a child and is currently homeschooling his children. He also works part-time as a scholarship coordinator for the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation, an educational assistance organization, or EAO, that connects students and private schools with MOScholars scholarship funding.
Some Missouri students “feel they’re not getting their educational needs met in their local public school, whether that’s bullying issues, whether that’s kids that don’t think the academics are meeting their needs, whatever the situation is that the parent feels trapped with no other option in their public school,” Hurlbert said.
“Without opportunity and without being able to find a place where you can learn and thrive educationally, you’re cutting off the future prospects of that kid,” he added. “The more options and opportunities there are available, I think it’s best for these kids moving forward.”
Fogle said one of her concerns with allocating state funds to private school vouchers via MOScholars is the fact that unlike public schools, private schools don’t have to accept students with different backgrounds and needs.
“Public education is at the core of this country. It’s one of the things that makes this country the greatest in the world,” Fogle said. Private schools “don’t have any accountability. They pick and choose who they educate. It seems like school choice isn’t on the side of the family, but on the side of the school — the schools get to pick and choose who they accept.”
She said she and other lawmakers went through the handbooks of a number of schools participating in the MOScholars program.
Those include “schools who refuse to educate girls who are pregnant because they call them a ‘moral distraction to their peers,’ schools who won’t educate children who happen to be gay or have a family member who happens to be gay,” she said. “(There are) schools that very clearly on their website or in their handbook say that if your child has a disability, there’s no room for them here.”
“It’s a parent’s right — and I affirm that — to send their children where they see fit. But I am very much opposed to my tax dollars going to a school that would not have educated me as a child,” she added.
MOScholars seeks to meet growing demand
In the three years since the MOScholars program began, it has awarded 2,700 scholarships to students across the state, according to Hurlbert.
In fiscal year 2023 — the first year of the program — MOScholars awarded more than 1,300 scholarships to students attending almost 180 schools, surpassing its goals of 800 and 150, respectively.
The next year, it awarded almost 2,000 scholarships to students attending more than 300 schools, surpassing its goals of 1,500 and 200, respectively, according to the Missouri state treasurer’s budget request.
Last year, then-Gov. Mike Parson signed an education bill that boosted teacher pay and expanded access to charter schools. The law also broadened the criteria for students to qualify for the MOScholars program, which is now necessitating an increase in funding, Hurlbert said.
“Now that (Senate Bill) 727 has expanded the eligibility criteria to include siblings, to be statewide, to go all the way up to 300 percent of the free- and reduced-lunch threshold … we’re going to have a much wider audience that is now eligible for these scholarships, so there’s going to be even more demand,” he said.
“We needed to do something to supplement those scholarships and give those parents the true educational freedom that they need to be able to make the choice that’s best for their kid,” he added. “When you’re expanding the base that much, you’re going to create a chokepoint on these scholarships and you’re going to cut off a lot of opportunities for kids.”
Rep. Stephanie Hein, a Springfield Democrat who serves on the House Budget Committee, said that last year, the state issued $23.4 million in tax credits for donations to the MOScholars program.
Because per-student spending under the program is capped at the state adequacy target, if this level of donations is maintained over the next several years, it will be enough to cover the program’s targets for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, Hein said. During those years, the program aims to award 2,300 and 2,500 scholarships, respectively.
Since the program is on track to meet its targets through tax credits alone, Hein said she doesn’t believe it’s the responsibility of the state to provide more money, even if demand for scholarships surpasses the state’s targets, as it has in previous years.
“The state has agreements with these different EAOs. It’s up to the EAOs to go out, raise the money, work with donors and get those funds in,” she said. “That’s their job. That’s not my job. So if they don’t have enough money to meet the demand, that’s on them. That comes down to donors not being interested in giving to the program.”
Also included in the education law passed last year was a provision allowing Missourians to collectively donate up to $75 million to the MOScholars program.
Hein said that given this change, she was initially confused by the governor’s proposal to also allocate state money to the program. But when she realized the program had received less than $24 million last year, she said, “that’s when I started to figure it out.”
“The donors aren’t as interested in giving money to this program as we thought, so because of that, we are having to pay for it with tax dollars,” she said. “Even with a 100 percent tax credit, contributing to these ESA funds isn’t attractive to them.”
“It signals to me that maybe people like their public schools, and maybe people want to see their funds invested in public education, and they’re not so excited about moving down this private school voucher pathway,” she said. “If they were, all of those tax credits would have been issued.”
If passed by the Senate, this provision would require long-term spending on the part of the state, Hein said.
“If we are starting down this pathway of funding private schools with public money, you can’t give a child a scholarship for one year, right?” she said. “They don’t want them to start in a school for one year and then say, ‘Oh, the scholarship isn’t there. You have to go back to public school.’ We’re going to end up being on the hook for this as long as these kids are in school.”
This could create an even greater state spending obligation, she said, if Missouri Republicans fulfill their promise to eliminate the state’s income tax.
“The way the tax credits work is, if you contribute to the EAOs, then you receive a tax credit on your Missouri state income tax. Well, if we eliminate the state income tax, all tax credits go away,” she said. “That means there’s no money coming in to fund these EAOs. Then what do you think is going to happen? There’s a good chance we’re going to have to fund them, because again, you can’t take a child’s scholarship away from them after just one year.”
Questionable constitutionality
Critics of the governor’s proposal have also voiced concerns that the funding could be illegal under the Missouri Constitution.
Section 8 of the Missouri Constitution prohibits government at any level from “ever mak(ing) an appropriation .. from any public fund” to any religious organization, including “to help to support or sustain any private or public school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination.”
“My understanding is that the reason that we have made these tax credits is because it is unconstitutional to directly give money to private school institutions,” said Rep. Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat and the House minority leader, at a January press conference.
Hurlbert said he believes the proposal would not violate the Missouri Constitution because the $50 million would not be “direct funding” for private schools.
Instead, he said, the money is given to the state treasurer’s office, which then distributes it to EAOs, which act as intermediaries between families and the state. The EAOs then divide the money into education savings accounts that parents can access.
From there, families can upload bills for education-related expenses like tuition, educational therapy, technology and tutoring and have money from the accounts used to cover those costs.
“In the eyes of the law under this program, schools are little more than vendors that are providing a service to the kids,” Hurlbert said. “The funding all goes to parents and is controlled by parents.”
What’s ahead?
Now that the House has finished and passed its version of the budget, it has sent its proposals to the Senate, where legislators are debating changes of their own.
Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat who sits on the Senate Budget Committee, said one of her main priorities is ensuring the foundation formula is fully funded.
She said she was also focused on “ensuring that we don’t put $50 million of general revenue into a program that has zero proof of actually raising achievement for our students while at the same time diverting tax dollars to unfunded, unaccredited schools that don’t accept all students.”
Nurrenbern called Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, a “big supporter of public education” who has “already made comments alluding to the fact that he plans to restore full funding of the foundation formula.”
Hough did not respond to a request for an interview.
A finalized budget must pass both chambers of the General Assembly at least one week before the legislative session ends. This year, session will end May 16, so legislators have until May 9 to iron out final details of the state’s next budget.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
