Voucher Backers Hail Spitzer's Budget

While he didn't highlight this in his initial speech on his school reform plan, what Spitzer proposed in his budget is very bold and exciting -- let's hope it passes!

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Voucher Backers Hail Spitzer's Budget

BY SARAH GARLAND - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 1, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47836

Governor Spitzer is attempting to make private school tuition tax deductible.

The executive budget he released yesterday would give middle-class parents a tax deduction of up to $1,000 for tuition. New York would be one of the few states to do so....

Mr. Spitzer, who graduated from and sends his children to Horace Mann, an elite private school in the Bronx, is seeking to allow families with an annual income of $116,000 or less to deduct $1,000 from their state income taxes for tuition paid to public, private, or parochial schools. (Parents who live out of state and send their children to public schools here must pay tuition.) Families that earn between $116,000 and $125,000 a year also could take a deduction, although the amount of the deduction would be lower for higher salaries. Families that make more than $125,000 would be ineligible.

Advocates for private and parochial schools said they were thrilled by the announcement of the tuition deduction, which they said was as an improvement on the state child tax credit passed last year that gives $330 to all families with school-age children for unspecified use.