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Senate subcommittee previews rewrite of scholarship program to address court ruling
Summary
A Senate Education subcommittee on Monday reviewed a redrafted bill to convert the Education Scholarship Trust Fund into a “K–12 Education Lottery Scholarship,” shifting funding to the state lottery account, tightening eligibility to residency plus poverty guidelines, expanding covered expenses, and preserving a capped rollout; no vote was held.
Subcommittee chair opened a final 2024 meeting to review a bill scheduled to be prefiled tomorrow that would restructure the state’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund into a K–12 Education Lottery Scholarship to respond to a recent South Carolina Supreme Court ruling.
The briefing, led by Donna Barton, research director for K–12 issues, framed the redraft as a direct response to the Edison opinion (filed Sept. 11, 2024), which concluded portions of the current trust arrangement treated appropriated money as public funds and struck parts of the law that would have benefited independent schools. "The majority of opinion concluded that this was not a true trust fund and therefore maintained its public fund nature and struck portions of the act that would have benefited independent schools," Barton told the subcommittee.
Why it matters: the proposed rewrite changes where the money comes from and how awards are calculated, an effort staff said is…
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