Six Pennsylvania senators, including a Democrat, are writing the bill that would opt the state in without the governor

Pennsylvania is the largest state that has not decided whether to join the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (also called the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, ECCA, or §25F), and until now the decision has been discussed as one man's to make. On August 5, 2026, six state senators filed the paperwork that starts a second route. Senate co-sponsorship memo 49085, titled “Ensuring Pennsylvania's Participation in the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Program,” announces forthcoming legislation to put the commonwealth into the program by statute.

The signers matter more than the memo's two paragraphs. The prime sponsor is Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-39), joined by Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-41), Appropriations Chair Scott Martin (R-13), Education Chair Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-27), and Sen. Judy Ward (R-30). The sixth name is Sen. Anthony Williams (D-8) of Philadelphia. That is the chamber's presiding officer, its majority leader, and the chairs of the two committees any such bill has to pass through, plus a Democrat, all attached to a bill before it has a number.

The route they are taking is written into the federal statute. §25F(g) has a state's participation turn on an election made by the state, and Treasury's guidance has treated that as something a governor or a designated state official can file, which is how most of the thirty states on the roster got there. But a legislature can also direct it, and several states have already proven the point: North Carolina and Kansas and Kentucky are all in by acts of their legislatures over their governors' vetoes, Tennessee directed its Department of Education to make the election by statute, and Idaho and Oklahoma each codified participation rather than leaving it to a press release. A Pennsylvania statute would put the commonwealth in the same category. Nothing about the memo makes that outcome likely on its own; a co-sponsorship memo is the earliest formal step there is, the bill has no number yet, and the House is controlled by the other party.

The memo's argument is the one that has moved fence-sitting states all year, and it is about money leaving rather than money arriving. Because the credit belongs to the donor and not the state, a Pennsylvanian can claim it whether or not Pennsylvania participates. What participation determines is whether any Pennsylvania student can receive the resulting scholarship. As the memo puts it, without an election “these dollars will be sent to other states, bypassing Pennsylvania students.” That is not rhetoric, it is the structure we walked through in detail this month: donations travel across state lines and scholarships do not. The senators put the annual figure for Pennsylvania at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Gov. Josh Shapiro has not committed either way, which the memo says directly. It is a genuinely open question rather than a refusal: Pennsylvania has run state tax-credit scholarships through its EITC and OSTC programs for two decades, Shapiro has supported and expanded them, and the commonwealth was already rewriting that state framework this session with §25F in view. The practical deadline is January 1, 2027, when the credit takes effect, and the election is made annually, so a state that misses the first year is not locked out of the second.

For operators in Pennsylvania, the honest read is that nothing has changed yet and it is still worth preparing. There is no Pennsylvania SGO list to apply to, no state process to enter, and no federal listing available until the commonwealth elects in. What exists is a formation runway, and it does not depend on the outcome: 501(c)(3) status, a board, a scholarship policy, and school relationships are the same work in any state, and they are the work that takes months. Track the state on our Pennsylvania page, work through the free SGO builder, and see who is already organizing in the SGO directory.