For the first time in a decade, the Kansas Low Income Students Tax Credit Scholarship program reached the $10 million cap set by the legislature at its inception.
The program allows individuals and corporations to claim a 75% state income tax credit for donations to approved Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) that provide scholarships to eligible low-income students to attend private schools.
But in 2025, for the first time, students were turned away due to a lack of funds.
“Multiple SGOs in Kansas had to tell donors they couldn’t take their donation last year and its Kansas kids who will suffer,” said James Franko, President of the Kansas Policy Institute, which owns The Sentinel. “Kansas kids trying to find the right educational fit are going to be turned away because donors had to be turned away from the program.”
President of ACE Scholarships — one of the SGOs in Kansas — AJ Kuhle, agreed.
“We’ve also had to, unfortunately, turn away students,” he said. “I think this last year, I think we had about 1,100 kids that were turned away because we just didn’t have the funds for it.”
ACE works with parents and private schools in 13 states.
While Kuhle was excited that Kansas reached the $10 million donation cap for the first time, he said it also shows there is strong demand for this type of program and that the cap should be raised.
“I mean by going and increasing that cap and continuing to fundraise at a high level, hopefully we can give more kids those opportunities,” Kuhle said.
Franko also felt the cap needs to be reexamined.
“The amount of credits has not changed in the 10-year history of the program, and that needs to change. Immediately,” Franko said. “Kids are being turned away because the program maxed out in 2025. There was an effort to increase the cap last year in anticipation of hitting the cap, but it stalled after passing the Senate. Hopefully the ’26 legislature can take up the issue early.”
Pastor Wade Moore, of Urban Preparatory Academy in Wichita — which has been a destination for students with tax credit scholarships — agreed that hitting the cap was a good thing, but noted that not only were increases needed, but shows that the program is working.
“That has been the argument in the past, is that ‘this program doesn’t work because we can never hit the cap,'” Moore said. “I think $10 million is a small cap compared to other states that have tax credit scholarship programs. I think that that cap should be raised. We should it should have some type of scale that if we hit 80% of it. Then we scale up another $2, 3, 4, 5 million dollars.”
Executive Director of the Kansas Catholic Conference Chuck Weber agreed that the restrictive cap of $10 million is restricting student achievement.
“Placing a restrictive cap on donations to this program has the very real effect of restricting academic achievement for the very students and families who need help the most,” he said. “We’re talking about kids from low-income households — mostly from minority homes — who desperately seek the American dream of a quality education of their choice.”
Weber also took issue with suggestions that this program is affecting public school funding.
“One of the big lies from opponents to parental education choice is that it somehow hurts public schools and public school funding,” Weber said. “It does not.
“Let me state unequivocally that the Catholic Bishops of Kansas and the Kansas Catholic Conference representing them support strong public schools and fully funded public schools. The low-income tax credit scholarship program does not, in any way, shape, or form, impact funding for public schools.”
Moore agreed.
“The argument is always going to be that public schools are losing money when we know that public schools are not losing money,” Moore said. “First of all, because there’s not a whole lot of students that take advantage or that will utilize the tax credit scholarship opportunity, right? And so it’s not like they are losing all these students. Second of all, funding for public school students continues to rise. So they are not losing money.”
Kansas has opportunity to opt-in to similar federal tax credit program
According to Kuhle, Governor Laura Kelly has the opportunity to opt Kansas into a federal program allowing individual donations to scholarship granting organizations to offset federal taxes.
The program does not start until 2027, but states are allowed to join early.
“Beginning in 2027, we’re going to have the opportunity with the new federal tax credit for scholarships to offer donors the opportunity to give funding to ACE, which will then turn around to provide for partial scholarships to students,” Kuhle said. “I know some other states and some other governors have kind of made that be a point where they’d like to opt in and give their students in their state access to this program. You know, it could be a pretty significant opportunity for students here in the state of Kansas to take advantage of scholarship dollars that are coming in to offset federal taxes.”
The risk, of course, is that legislators would decide that since there’s a federal program, the state-level program is unneeded.
Kuhle said the federal program is broader and serves a different group of students than the Kansas program.
“The tax credit for scholarships, from a federal perspective, can also be used for public, private, charter, potentially home schools and hybrid students, so they can all benefit,” Kuhle said. “So it’s opened up to a different group than just the low-income students for scholarships.”
He also said keeping the Kansas program in place is a hedge against changes in federal law.
“I would hope that this operates in perpetuity. The federal bill, as written, should operate that way, but Kansas lawmakers can’t control what happens federally,” Kuhle said. “So I would always keep a state one in place, so that they would have that opportunity to have kids be impacted in a positive way.”
