Raising the cap: A great opportunity

A change to an existing state law offers the potential for tremendous growth for a program that helps low-income Oklahoma families afford Catholic school tuition.

The Equal Opportunity Scholarship Act has been on the books in Oklahoma since 2011. The act allows individuals and qualifying businesses to make gifts to Scholarship Granting Organizations and receive tax credits in return. The maximum annual credit is $1,000 for individual filers, $2,000 for couples filing jointly and $100,000 for qualified business entities.

Through 2021, the law capped total credits at $5 million annually, which has been exceeded the past several years. But, the state Legislature approved a change that – beginning in 2022 – raised the cap to $50 million, with $25 million for private schools and $25 million for public schools.

One of several Scholarship Granting Organizations, the Tax Credit Scholarship program, generated $1.65 million in gifts in 2021 for scholarships to low-income students. This fall, several hundred students will receive a financial need-based scholarship to attend one of the 19 Catholic schools throughout the archdiocese.

Raising the cap will allow for more gifts, particularly from the business community. Those gifts, in turn, will help more children attend Catholic schools. That’s a victory for students, for their families and for our Catholic schools.

How important is TCS? At Sacred Heart Catholic School in El Reno, the principal reported that 26 of its 98 students were scholarship recipients this school year. Without TCS, those children would not be receiving the Christ-centered education the school provides.

“Tax Credit Scholarships help to give parents options to choose schools that fit all of the developmental needs of their child: spiritual, academic, moral, emotional and physical,” said Lara Schuler, director of Catholic education for the archdiocese. “All students should have an opportunity to learn that God loves them and that he has a great plan for their life. They learn this in Catholic schools in so many ways.”

Learn more about the Tax Credit Scholarship program at tcsok.org or by calling (405) 721-4115.

Peter de Keratry is executive director of the Catholic Foundation of Oklahoma.