2025 Catholic Schools Week Supplement
School choice advocates seek to get voucher program ‘across the finish line’
Rep. Julie McGuire poses with her son Viktor, a junior at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis. Viktor, adopted by McGuire in 2017, was born and raised in Ukraine. An advocate for school choice in Indiana, McGuire has experienced personally in the life of her son in the U.S. how vouchers help parents meet the educational needs of children. (Submitted photo)
By Sean Gallagher
Rep. Julie McGuire (R-Indianapolis) was an advocate of school choice in her first term in the state House of Representatives starting in 2022.
While she wanted parents in her district on the south side of Indianapolis and others across the Hoosier State to be able to choose the best educational setting for their children, McGuire came to this cause from personal experience.
Through the years, her youngest son Viktor has been enrolled at a public, a charter and a private school.
In 2017, McGuire and her husband Mark, members of St. Roch Parish in Indianapolis, adopted Viktor, who was born and raised in Ukraine and was 11 at the time.
When the McGuires brought Viktor home, they knew he needed intensive help with learning English, something that St. Roch School could not offer him. So, they enrolled him in a public school.
Later, he experienced challenges there.
“It was a very difficult year for him,” McGuire said. “He couldn’t deal with all of the distractions in the classroom. There were a lot of behavior issues, substitute teachers all the time. He would come home stressed out.”
So, she and her husband moved him to a charter school for his middle school years.
“It was very strict and fit his needs better,” McGuire noted.
Viktor is now a junior at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis.
“I believe in school choice because I think it’s the right thing for families,” McGuire said. “And I believe in it personally because I’ve been able to experience the flexibility that it’s given my family.”
Crossing the finish line
After being re-elected last November, McGuire returned to the Statehouse for the 2025 session of the Indiana General Assembly where she joined other advocates for school choice.
Two years ago, the legislature approved a major expansion of the state’s voucher program, giving some 97% of Hoosier families access to vouchers.
Legislators are now considering removing all income requirements from the voucher program and making school choice universal in Indiana. (Related story: Ways to show support for universal school choice in Indiana)
John Elcesser, executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Educational Association (INPEA), is working with legislators to move universal school choice in the state, in his words, “across the finish line.”
“We’re so close to having all families be able to take advantage of this without significant financial sacrifice,” Elcesser said. “We just need to take this last step.
“There are 10 other states right now that have universal choice or have passed universal choice legislation. Indiana once was a leader in school choice. Now, we’re trying to play catch up.”
Elcesser was an educator before coming to the INPEA in 2008 and knows from that experience in the classroom the difference school choice can make.
“I saw kids over the years that continued to struggle,” he recalled. “But then they get to the right teacher or the right school and, boom, the light goes on and they take off.
“We want all kids to be in the place where that light goes on and they can be successful, because they’re with the right teacher, in the right environment, the right social setting and the right values-based setting for them to be successful.”
Sue Prewitt is thankful that vouchers made it possible to enroll her twin granddaughters Cameron and Adrianne Prewitt at St. Roch School.
When she became their guardian about two years ago when their mother, her daughter, died, the twins were behind in their education.
Now in the eighth grade at St. Roch, Cameron and Adrianne have caught up with their classmates.
“Had I not had any vouchers for the twins, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it,” Prewitt said. “I’m 71. I still work part time, and I have Social Security. There would have been no way I could have afforded St. Roch without the vouchers.”
For Prewitt, sending her granddaughters to St. Roch wasn’t just about the educational help they have received there.
“It’s a community,” she said. “It’s more than just education. It’s faith and the community. I don’t feel like you get that in a public school.”
‘The money follows the child’
As good an educational experience as Cameron and Adrianne have had at St. Roch, it could be made even better if universal school choice is approved by the legislature.
As Chris Brunson, INPEA’s associate executive director, explained, many private schools that receive vouchers up to now have had to hire administrative staff members simply to manage the voucher application process.
“Schools that are not going to see one more dollar or enroll one more child because of the move to universal choice are going to free up a whole lot of administrative time to reinvest to direct services to students and improve quality of outcomes,” Brunson said.
He added that providing financial information to qualify for vouchers is “invasive to families.”
“They have to divulge all kinds of things, not just their tax records,” Brunson said. “In some cases, it’s a lot more than that. And it’s a burden to schools.”
The principles of school choice in Indiana go back much further than when the voucher program was created in 2011. Before then, moves were made to allow parents to enroll their children in any traditional public school district of their choice or in charter schools, which also pre-date the voucher program.
McGuire emphasized that all of these changes have been based in the simple policy that “the money follows the child.”
“We’re a state that believes in choice for parents to make the best decision about what setting is going to fit the education needs of their child,” she said.
Brunson added the most common school choice decision made by parents in Indiana is to send them from one traditional public school district to another one, not to a charter school or to a private school.
“It’s bigger than vouchers,” he said.
Elcesser noted that bringing the voucher program “across the finish line” and giving the last 3% of Hoosier families ineligible for a voucher access to one is a matter of fairness, because all families pay taxes that fund the program.
“We’re all contributing to that public funding. We’re all taxpayers,” he said. “We’re excluding a subset of folks from being able to participate in this program who are taxpayers and potentially significant taxpayers.
“Why would we exclude 3% of Indiana’s population from participating in this program and being able to exercise their responsibility as parents without significant financial sacrifice?”
And, in the end, Elcesser noted that it’s important for Hoosiers to know that the voucher program only takes up 2% of the state budget, less than 5% of the state education budget, and that only 6% of students in the state receive vouchers.
He added, “We believe that all families that are paying taxes should be able to use that small percentage of their state tax dollars to support private school choice.” †
Related: A tax-friendly way to help families receive a Catholic education
