In May, a three-year-old in Panorama City, California, handed a postcard to the student standing next to her. That student handed it to the next. By the time the postcard reached the end of the line, more than 1,100 students, ranging from preschoolers to seniors, all from St. Genevieve Parish Schools, had formed a human chain stretching a full mile to their neighborhood post office. They mailed 15,000 of them that day, all addressed to the same person: Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The message on every card was the same: “Governor Newsom, say yes to the EFTC.” EFTC stands for the Education Freedom Tax Credit.
It’s easy to think of tax policy as something that happens in hearing rooms, between lobbyists and legislative staffers, far from the kids it’s actually meant to help. The students at St. Genevieve, who call themselves “the Valiants,” didn’t wait for that version of the story. They wrote themselves into it.
What the Kids Are Actually Asking For
The campaign, nicknamed “A Valiant Effort,” has been building since February. In April, a delegation of students delivered postcards in person to the California State Capitol and met with Brooks Allen, the governor’s top education policy advisor. By May, they’d escalated to the human chain and a mass mailing, with police escorting the line of purple-shirted students through Panorama City. Seton Hill University offered participating students three college credits for the work, a sign that organizers treated this as civics education with real stakes, not a school field trip.
Their ask is simple: opt California into the EFTC.
The EFTC is a federal tax credit that lets a taxpayer contribute to a qualified Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) like AFC Scholarship Fund, a nonprofit that turns donations into scholarships for K-12 students, and receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 at filing. The donation happens first. The credit follows later, when the donor files taxes, reducing what they owe the IRS dollar for dollar.
For a state’s residents to use it, though, the state has to opt in. Every year by January 1, a governor or state authority has to submit a list of certified SGOs to the U.S. Treasury. No submission means no participation, and that isn’t a matter of cost. Opting in requires no state budget appropriation at all. It comes down to a signature that hasn’t been given.
That’s the gap the Valiants are trying to close.
Why It Matters When the Advocates Are Kids
Plenty of policy campaigns run on postcards. Fewer of them run on postcards signed by a five-year-old. There’s a reason the students at St. Genevieve are getting national coverage where a standard op-ed or lobbying push might not: a mile-long chain of kids in matching purple shirts is a hard thing to look away from, and it refocuses the debate on who actually matters – children in an actual classroom, waiting on an actual signature.
That reframing tracks with where public opinion already sits. National polling has found roughly 73% of Americans support school choice in some form, a level of agreement that cuts across party lines more than the political conversation usually suggests. The Valiants didn’t create that support. They gave it a face, a mailing address and a deadline.
A Campaign Built to Cross the Aisle
The purple on those matching T-shirts and postcards was a deliberate choice, meant to symbolize bipartisanship and the belief that expanding educational opportunity should transcend party lines.
The coalition supporting the students includes Democrats for Education Reform, the California Catholic Conference, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who served under President Obama.
Bipartisan support for the EFTC has been building. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, called his state’s decision to opt in “a no-brainer.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, announced her state’s intention for participation in May.
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U.S. Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican, has separately urged Newsom to act, framing it plainly: “Education is the foundation of opportunity… California must say yes. It’s time to unlock opportunity for families and put parents first.”
At the time of publication, California has not opted in, and no decision from the governor’s office has been made public.
What It Costs a State to Say No
AFC Scholarship Fund’s own explainer on the state opt-in process lays out what’s actually at stake when a state doesn’t act. Individual taxpayers in a non-participating state can still claim the credit, but only by donating to an SGO in a state that did opt in. That means their $1,700 funds a scholarship for a child somewhere else, not in their own community. Multiply that across a state’s taxpayers, and the math adds up fast: 100,000 residents claiming the credit through out-of-state donations would represent more than $170 million leaving that state for good.
That’s the quiet cost of “undecided.” It isn’t neutral. Every year a state doesn’t submit its SGO list to Treasury by January 1 is a year its own families are locked out while its own taxpayers’ dollars fund scholarships everywhere else.
What a Scholarship Already Makes Possible
It’s worth pausing on what the Valiants are actually pointing toward: scholarships and school choice can change lives.
Antoine and Manny, two brothers whose parents never finished sixth grade, found their way to Our Lady Queen of Angels, a Catholic school that gave them a foundation their family didn’t have access to growing up.
Their story is one of several featured on AFC Scholarship Fund’s Catholic Schools Scholarship Fund page, alongside Bo Bassett’s and Makensie Scott’s. Three different families, three different paths and one common thread: a scholarship that let a Catholic education become possible instead of aspirational.
These aren’t the students holding the postcards in Panorama City. But they’re the reason the postcards exist. Every one of the 15,000 cards mailed in May was, in effect, a bet that more families deserve the chance Antoine, Manny, Bo and Makensie already had.
Why This Is a Story About Now, Not Just November
Treasury’s final regulations for the EFTC are expected by the end of September, and the program itself takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. For families in the roughly 30 states that have already opted in, that date is a countdown. For families in states like California it’s a deadline that hasn’t been claimed yet.
The Valiants seem to understand something the adults in this fight sometimes forget: pressure moves deadlines. And pressure doesn’t have to come with a title or a lobbying budget behind it. Sometimes it’s 1,100 students, 15,000 postcards and the willingness to walk a mile to make sure someone reads them.
Want to know where your own state stands? Check your eligibility with AFC Scholarship Fund’s EFTC eligibility calculator and read the full picture of how states opt into the EFTC.
They're asking him to opt California into the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC), which requires the state to submit a list of certified scholarship granting organizations to the U.S. Treasury by Jan. 1 each year.
Families in that state can't access EFTC-funded scholarships locally. Residents can still personally claim the credit by donating to an out-of-state SGO, but the scholarship it funds goes to a child in a different state.
No. The EFTC is entirely federally incentivized. Opting in requires no state budget appropriation, only an administrative submission from the governor's office.
