Newly elected Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seemed to be off to a good start. He called for the entire South Florida Water Management District to resign over allegations of gross mismanagement and his movement on medical marijuana has pleased many across the state. The first polls show that DeSantis is still in his honeymoon phase with the voters.
But the honeymoon may be at an end.
Florida already has a program that allows corporate taxpayers to skip paying Tallahassee and instead send their money to private schools where it is used to pay for the State’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Florida has four voucher programs providing money to private schools. The tax credit program is the state’s largest, serving nearly 100,000 students. Another 14,000 students are waiting to get in on the program.
DeSantis’ plan? Take $90 to $100 million more from general revenues and pay that over to private schools to take the kids off the waiting list, out of public schools, and into private academies.
Florida’s teacher unions tried to have the existing tax credit voucher program declared unconstitutional. Florida’s Constitution has a provision that education is a fundamental value and guarantees that each student residing in the state is entitled to an education from a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” The Florida Supreme Court rejected the challenge and let a lower court ruling stand.
The problem is that private schools are not the same as public schools, contrary to the Governor’s assertions. Private schools are not bound by the same requirements for teacher qualifications.
The Orlando Sentinel had published stories detailing how private schools that take state money used fraudulent fire and health reports and even hired untrained teachers, some with criminal records. These private schools also freely discriminate based on religion, disability, language skills, and even sexual orientation.
The private schools aren’t the panacea they claim to be. About 60 percent of the students who use a tax credit scholarship return to public school within one or two years. Those who come back do worse on state tests, meaning the public schools have to expend even more resources to try to get the children back on track.
That’s no surprise in a private school system that lacks both standards and accountability.
DeSantis is clearly trying to appeal to his conservative base that would rather that the State get out of education all together. Well, except for the money part. They’re fine with the state writing checks to private schools. They just bristle at the idea that these schools, many of which are religious academies, be held to the same standards as the public schools that they want to replace.
Education can’t be treated like any business. When a store or factory closes down, the impact is localized and temporary. When a child is cheated out of the promise of a high-quality education, the damage is felt for a lifetime for the child and for generations by the people of Florida.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida at number 40 among the states for K-12 educational achievement, even behind states like Alabama and Arkansas. We can do better. Statewide, our college system ranks among the nation’s best. Our primary education system slacks by comparison.
And diverting even more money from our public school system just guarantees that we will be frozen forever in failure, like a fly fossilized in amber.
Voters should let the Governor and their State Senators and Representatives know that they should stop the slow dismantling of our education system and reject the expansion of the Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Grant Miller
