WHEREAS, Governor Cuomo is proposing an education tax credit that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and would harm the state’s public schools and public school students; and

WHEREAS, the governor’s proposal, which he is calling the Parental Choice in Education Act, would give away $150 million in tax credits; and

WHEREAS, $50 million of the tax credits would go to the wealthy — private school donors who would get tax credits for contributions of up to $1 million to private school scholarship funds; and

WHEREAS, the governor’s education tax credit proposal bears striking resemblance to — and seems to be based on — model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an extreme right-wing group that wants to destroy public education and whose funders include the Koch family; and

WHEREAS, the governor is proposing this giveaway to the wealthy at a time when the state still owes billions of dollars to public schools to fulfill its constitutional obligations under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement; and

WHEREAS, by diverting public funds to subsidize tuition to nonpublic schools, the education tax credit amounts to a thinly veiled voucher program; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the United Federation of Teachers strongly opposes the governor’s proposed education tax credit and will work vigorously against its passage.