Virginians could soon be asked to vote on a new 1% sales tax to fix aging public schools in their communities. Half of Virginia schools are more than 50 years old and need repairs, and state leaders are weighing whether to allow referendums on this November’s ballot as districts face growing repair costs and new financial pressure tied to private school voucher programs.
Under Virginia’s Dillon Rule, local governments can only exercise powers granted by state lawmakers, and former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed bills that would have given all communities the option to ask voters for a school construction sales tax.
Instead of allowing these bills to pass, Youngkin’s solution for education was to opt Virginia into the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). Passed into law as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025, the ECCA establishes a voluntary federal school voucher program.
As we’ve previously reported, the ECCA gives taxpayers dollar-for-dollar tax credits in exchange for donating to scholarship granting organizations that then award scholarships that pay for private school tuition.
Supporters tout it as a way to empower parents to choose which school their children attend, often using fear tactics and misinformation to convince voters of the dangers of public schools. Even the White House has falsely claimed that the public school system indoctrinates students with “radical, anti-American ideologies.”
“There is so much misinformation and disinformation about public schools that I think it really sways a lot of people,” Marianne Burke, Ph.D., Co-Founder of 4 Public Education, said. “There’s always somebody complaining about how horrible the public schools are.”
Research has repeatedly shown that programs like the ECCA mostly benefit the wealthiest households, especially those with children already in private schools. At the same time, they divert tax dollars from public education into private schools, which will put the public school system even farther behind in fixing the schools that are falling apart.
The biggest ECCA winners are America’s wealthiest
The biggest criterion for eligibility in the ECCA’s private school voucher program is that a household earns less than 300% of the median income of their area.
A study by The Brookings Institute points out that this means if your region of the state has a median income of $45,000 per year and an individual in your household earns $150,000, you make too much money to participate. Yet if your area’s median income is $175,000 and you earn $500,000, you can participate in the program.
In other words, the wealthier your area, the more money you can earn and still take advantage of the program—and private schools know it.
“You’ve got to be rich to be able to send your kid to private school,” Burke said. “Often, the amount that the scholarship will provide doesn’t come near the tuition of the private school. Also, there is evidence that these schools are raising their tuition based on the fact that there will be people with scholarships, so they can absorb it.”
The evidence Burke mentioned comes from organizations like the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), a premier education research consortium funded by the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. REACH found that as programs like ECCA have been implemented, private schools have raised their tuition rates.
Urban areas tend to have higher median incomes than rural areas, meaning they’re more likely to be able to cover private school tuition. Additionally, urban residents are far more likely to have a private school within five miles of their homes. The Brookings Institute study shows that on average, more than 90% of urban residents live within five miles of a private school compared to just 28% of rural residents.
Because Virginia pools state tax revenue and redistributes it through statewide formulas, rural school divisions with less local tax base rely more heavily on state funding for education. Those communities have less local tax base to pay for school construction and repair, so they more urgently need tools like the local sales tax option now under consideration.
Putting the whole picture together, the ECCA helps wealthy, urban Virginians who are the most likely to make enough money to put their children into private school while disadvantaging rural Virginians and others who live in low-income communities. Arkansas has already proven this: A 2023 study showed that 95% of students using private school vouchers were already attending private schools the previous year.
What this means for Virginia
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities offers median income data by county in the commonwealth of Virginia. Averaging information from 2020 to 2024, the median income for Galax City, in the southwest corner of the state, was $38,675. The median income for northern Virginia’s Loudoun County was $181,765.
Under the ECCA, a resident of Galax City making $120,000 a year would be considered too wealthy to be eligible for a private school voucher for their child. But if they moved northeast to Sterling or Leesburg and made $540,000 a year, they would qualify.
The ECCA not only harms low-income and rural Virginians, but also the commonwealth itself. Crumbling public schools are just one example of the already underfunded public education system.
“Because this is happening, because there are so many students getting scholarships, then [public] schools get this much less money,” Burke said.
In order to assess the likely tax impact of the ECCA on the commonwealth, the Virginia Education Association looked at how many students in Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Arizona switched from public schools to private via vouchers after the initiation of statewide voucher programs and applied those numbers to Virginia.
They found that the annual loss to state tax revenue in Virginia would be anywhere between $222 million and $956 million, making it that much more difficult for repairs to be made to public schools, especially in rural areas.
The governor of any US state must renew its participation in the ECCA annually. Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) has not indicated whether or not she will opt Virginia in for another year.
READ MORE: Federal school voucher program harms Virginia’s most vulnerable families
