For one single mother in Tulsa, keeping her son out of trouble and in school felt impossible. Until school choice changed everything.
George was not an easy child.
His mother will be the first to tell you that. She had him later in life. When her marriage ended, she was left raising him alone. George was already struggling: getting into trouble at school, testing every boundary, and making life hard for himself and for everyone around him.
She was doing everything she could. It just wasn’t enough.
When Families Run Out of Options
George started at a Tulsa public school. When that didn’t work, they tried a public charter school.
He got kicked out of both.
For a single mother already stretched thin financially, running out of public school options is not just a logistical problem. It is a crisis.
“Life was rough. Finances were rough,” she explains.
She found a private school, and enrolled him knowing she could barely afford the tuition. She paid anyway, because the alternative was unthinkable.
“I feel like as a single mother, I want my child to get a good education just like if I had a lot of money.”
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A Door She Could Not Have Opened Alone
That is where the tax credit scholarship changed everything.
“To me, I feel like that’s where the tax credit came in to help me,” she says. “God opened up this door.”
Through the scholarship, she was able to enroll George at Crossover, a school that would prove to be far more than an academic environment. It was a community. A place with men who saw a boy who needed more than a classroom.
They stepped in.
“When I came to Crossover, I met so many amazing men that helped my son through his process.”
That kind of investment is hard to measure on a report card. But its effects are impossible to miss.
From Trouble to Transformation
George is now in high school.
The boy his mother once described, with equal parts exhaustion and love, as “almost a devil child” is, in her words, “almost an angel now.”
That is not a small thing. That is a life redirected.
“If this door would not have opened up for me as a parent to afford him to go to this school, my son probably would be on the streets or in a juvenile place.”
She is not speaking in hypotheticals, but as a mother who watched her son teetering on an edge and found, just in time, a school that pulled him back.
Why the Education Freedom Tax Credit Matters for Families Like George’s
George’s story is not unique. Across the country, there are single parents, working parents, and families living on the edge of what they can afford who are fighting the same battle. They want the right school for their child. They simply cannot afford to get there on their own.
The Education Freedom Tax Credit, launching in 2027, is designed to close that gap. By expanding the pool of scholarship funding available to families, the EFTC will ensure that more parents have access to the schools that can truly reach their children.
Because school choice is not just about academics. Sometimes it is what keeps a child off the streets and puts him on a path toward something better. George’s mother found that path. The EFTC will allow more families to find theirs, too.
