Dave McCormick visited the Silver Academy in Harrisburg on back-to-school day, using the stop at the area’s only Jewish day school to press his case for a new federal school-choice tax credit. The visit came after President Donald Trump signed the Educational Choice for Children Act as part of his “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
The law lets donations to organizations that award private-school scholarships be turned into tax credits, a structure McCormick cast as a way to bring more money into education. He said the goal is not to fight teachers or unions, but to add resources and competition. “I’m just trying to bring resources and competition. Those are the two things — more money and competition,” he said. “I think if we do that, we’re going to serve our kids well.”
For Silver Academy, the argument was immediate and practical. Gila Ogle said the school relies heavily on Pennsylvania’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit, or EITC, and said the federal version would ease a constant fundraising burden. “We say ‘yes’ first, and then we find the money,” she said. “So, it is a huge burden on us to be able to find those dollars. EITC makes it much more straightforward, and the federal tax credit as well would be a huge boost to what we can do.”
The timing matters because states have to opt into the program by Jan. 1 each year, and McCormick said he hopes Gov. Josh Shapiro will choose to put Pennsylvania in. The Shapiro administration said it is awaiting federal guidance on how the program would work, including which students would be eligible and how it would interact with existing programs. That leaves the state with a question that now goes beyond one school visit: whether Pennsylvania will join a federal tax-credit system that supporters say could widen choice and opponents say would pull resources away from public schools, especially in lower-income and rural areas where private-school options are fewer.
McCormick framed the plan as additive, not adversarial. “If we put this in place in Pennsylvania, which I hope we’ll do — I hope the governor will agree to do that, that’s going to give just lots of money on top of the money we already have in our school systems,” he said. “This isn’t against anything. It’s for educational choice.” For now, the decision rests with Harrisburg, and the Jan. 1 deadline gives the debate a clock.