Welcome to Cashing in on Kids, a newsletter for people fighting to stop the privatization of America’s public schools—produced by In the Public Interest.

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Corporate tax breaks are bleeding South Carolina public schools of funding. South Carolina’s public school districts lost $423 million in property tax revenues during the 2019 fiscal year, due to corporate tax breaks granted by county governments. That’s an increase of $99 million—or 31 percent—compared to just two years earlier, according to a new Good Jobs First report released today.

Which students were hit the hardest? Six school districts with some of the highest poverty rates in the state, as measured by the share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, each lost more than $2,000 per student. Four of those have majority Black plus Latino student populations.

“Our new findings confirm what we have long suspected: that the poor pay more, that corporate tax breaks often disproportionately harm historically disadvantaged communities,” said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. Good Jobs First

The “haves” and the “have nots.” “For Generation Z, Covid-19 has laid bare an already simmering gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’ favoring those who can social distance, those who had SAT and AP tutoring, those who had access to technology, those with access to health care and those whose parents have jobs and could work from home,” Anaheim Union High School District (California) Superintendent Michael Matsuda wrote back in August. 

“COVID-19 has really exposed all these gaps that were pre-existing, but now the gaps are even bigger because we’re in a recession,” he says in a new interview with Hosam Elattar. Voice of OC

Public education advocacy and faith. Tomorrow, September 16th at 7pm ET, Pastors for NC Children will host a webinar on why churches and faith leaders nationwide should care about equity in public schools. Pastors for NC Children

Trump’s white supremacist denial of history. Last week, Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding from California public schools that use the 1619 Project curriculum. He even claimed it is un-American to teach our children the history of Black people in America since the birth of slavery. Here’s why that’s completely wrong. Schott Foundation

We (In the Public Interest) agree. “Every public school in the nation should have a community garden 🥕🥦🍅,” tweets Cori Bush, Democratic nominee for Missouri’s 1st congressional district. Twitter

Photo by Allison Shelley for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action