Due to his support for private school vouchers, a coalition of public education advocacy organizations has formally urged the Democratic presidential candidate, VP Kamala Harris, to reconsider selecting Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.
Last Sunday, President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed his vice, Harris. At the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the vice president is expected to declare her running mate, after which she would probably accept the party’s nomination.
Shapiro is a popular governor of a significant swing state and has been rumored to be a top pick for Harris. According to an Emerson College Polling/The Hill Survey, of 850 Pennsylvanians surveyed between July 22 and 23, 49% approved and 31% disapproved of Shapiro. There is a 3.3 percent margin of error or minus for the poll.
A coalition presenting over two dozen national organizations, including 412 Justice in Pennsylvania, signed a letter on July 24 urging Harris to “select a running mate for Vice President of the United States who fully supports public education.” They further stated, “For this reason, we respectfully ask you not to select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.”
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According to the coalition, Shapiro does not support public education and instead “instead has supported voucher schemes.”
With the help of state funds, students can attend private and religious schools at reduced tuition, thanks to the vouchers for private education. The issues usually follow party lines; Democrats and many educators claim that vouchers take money away from public education, while Republicans support them as a means to provide better opportunities.
Shapiro has publicly backed school vouchers, including his initial support of a $100 million school voucher program with the state’s Republican Senate Legislature, which he later vetoed. He pointed out that they ought to pair up with more funding for public education. He approved the state budget in July, allocating an additional $1.1 billion for K-12 education.
On Wednesday, Shapiro posted about K-12 education on his X (formerly Twitter) account: “For two years in a row, we worked across the aisle to deliver historic funding for our K-12 public schools. And we gave every kid-free breakfast, funded our special education programs, and got kids the mental health services they needed. We can do big things in Pennsylvania.”
Shapiro’s spokesperson, Manuel Bonder, told the media on Saturday, “In his time in office, Governor Shapiro has consistently delivered historic increases in public education funding and finally, after decades of inaction, moved Pennsylvania towards adequately and equitably funding our public schools. Despite being the only Governor in the nation with a divided legislature – and despite bad faith attacks from all sides – Josh Shapiro has been a champion for public education and delivered real results.”
Bonder provided a further context highlighting Shapiro’s effort in securing $300 million for a range of education-related initiatives, which were split equally between financing for special education, student mental health supports, and long-term investment for school infrastructure and environment repairs.
Meanwhile, Shapiro was compared in the coalition to the recently released conservative agenda Project 2025, stating that he “has supported education policies mirroring Project 2025,” a nearly 900-page document produced by The Heritage Foundation. This right-wing think tank aims to serve as a manual for the future conservative administration. Along with other measures aimed at cutting back on public education, Project 2025 aims to abolish the Department of Education (DOE).
However, several education policy advocates expressed their continued support for Shapiro, highlighting the governor’s legislative achievement for public education despite this backlash.
In an X post, Peter Schweyer, the Democratic chair of the Pennsylvania House Education Committee, stated that he is “proudly one of the most anti-voucher legislators in PA.” Still, he noted that Shapiro “delivered more than $1.5 billion in money for our public schools since becoming governor. In a divided legislature (remember the GOP controls the state senate), he was able to secure the most aggressive public K-12 funding packing in the history of PA.”
