When asked how far along in college he is, Zymir Yeargin says he is in the “Class of ‘27” at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y.
Yeargin, who earned a full scholarship to that university where he studies toxicology, joined his mother, Natasha Yeargin, at a 20th anniversary event for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program Sept. 21 at Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus in Southeast Washington.
After turning down admissions offers at Gonzaga College High School and St. John’s College High School, Yeargin attended Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington through a federal-funded OSP scholarship. In addition to earning high grades, Yeargin said he learned a great deal from the school’s leadership and staff – including Larry Savoy, Archbishop Carroll’s president, and Elana Gilmore, the school’s principal. He said he learned the importance of keeping a schedule as a college student while still enjoying social opportunities, which helped him make a successful transition to higher education.
“My income shouldn’t dictate the quality of education my child receives,” Natasha Yeargin told the Catholic Standard. During the last 11 years, she has become a school choice activist, helping District parents navigate the process of applying for an OSP scholarship and to schools, as the family academic advisor specialist at Serving Our Children, which administers OSP for the U.S. Department of Education.
She decided to send Zymir to a Catholic school after deciding the local D.C. public schools were not up to par and that public charter school options were too crowded and did not provide the individual attention that her son could benefit from.
Maria Reyes, who raised her four daughters in Adams Morgan, sent them to District Catholic schools through the OSP program and attended the Saturday afternoon OSP anniversary event. Her youngest daughter, Diana Reyes, is a senior at Archbishop Carroll, after graduating from Holy Trinity School in Georgetown. Like the Yeargin family, the Reyes family is not Catholic.
“I saw the opportunity they were offering” Maria Reyes said about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides $10,000 scholarships for K-8 students attending private and parochial schools in the city, with $15,000 scholarships for high school students. Even though the average family income of OSP families for the 2022-2023 school year was $24,016, according to Serving Our Children, many parents had some financial commitments to their child’s school. Reyes said she usually paid annual fees and tuition ranging from $300to $500 for each daughter.
She is proud that her third child, Michelle Reyes, graduated from St. John’s College High School before matriculating to Temple University. Meanwhile, her oldest, Karen Salmeron, graduated from Villanova University after matriculating from Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Takoma Park, Maryland, as did her second daughter Nancy Salmeron, who graduated from Pembroke University in North Carolina before returning back home to work in the admissions office at The Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland. While her two daughters attended Don Bosco, Reyes could not use an OSP scholarship, since the program only applies to District of Columbia schools.
Valerie Carpenter, the deputy manager for family and community affairs at Serving Our Children, recalled recently speaking with the parent of a new student receiving an Opportunity Scholarship at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Academy in Washington, who was effusive in her praise of the school after her son’s first week in second grade. The smaller class sizes at the school enabled the boy’s teachers to know him better, the parent told Carpenter.
OSP is generating 3,500 to 4,000 applicants a year, but current funding levels allow just 1,400 students to receive scholarships.
In 2004, President George W. Bush signed into law the D.C. School Choice Inventive Act of 2003, which authorized OSP for up to 2,000 low-income children in the District of Columbia, to enable those children to attend a private school of the family’s choice. OSP is the only federally-funded school voucher program.
After President Barack Obama tried to defund the program in 2009 and prevent any new students from entering it, then House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Joe Lieberman introduced the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act to restore funding for the program and again allow new students to participate.
Boehner, who is Catholic, was known for his strong advocacy for the OSP program. OSP supporters on Capitol Hill coupled additional funding for D.C. public charter schools and D.C. public schools, which helped elicit the support of Democrats such as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
During the 20 years of the program, its regulations have tightened somewhat, and now, only accredited District of Columbia schools may participate in the program.
Meanwhile, in May 2022, in the Carson v. Makin case, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Maine’s ban on religious schools participating in a state voucher program, arguing that it violated the parents’ First Amendment rights. This followed a 2019 case that struck down a Montana ban on parochial schools participating in the state’s school choice program. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that voucher programs that include parochial schools do not violate the separation between church and state that characterizes American governance.
