HB7045: A Bill So Expansive It Needed to be Signed Twice.

Yesterday morning (5/11/21), Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB7045 into law at a private, Catholic school in Hialeah. And then, a few hours later he signed it, again, at another private, Catholic school in Jacksonville. You can watch the bill signing ceremonies here and here. The bill massively expands private school vouchers in Florida, dramatically raises the income qualifications to serve middle class children, and combines the special needs vouchers with the income based, directly funded Florida Empowerment Scholarship or FES (complicating its use for current special needs recipients and, also, placing those scholarships at risk in the event of a legal challenge to the FES). It is being heralded as the “largest expansion of school choice in the history of the state.”

The Wall Street Journal noted (and the Florida Department of Education celebrated) that the expansion is a “boon” to students already in private school and will make Florida “an education refuge for low- and middle-income families.” Edu-blogger Peter Greene had a different take:

DeSantis celebrated the “doubling down on our commitment to working families and making sure they have the ability to get their kids into the school of their choices” and called the bill “really, really far reaching.” He noted the bill as broadening opportunities, saying it would “eliminate bureaucratic barriers to education” and eliminate waitlists.

DeSantis explained he was most proud that HB7045 expands access to military families, so, in Florida, they will always have access to scholarship options (to potentially unaccredited schools) for their children, without regard to any wait list or maximum scholarship enrollment caps. So “if you’re wearing the uniform, we’re going to be there for you” (assuming you don’t mind lack of academic oversight or credentialed teachers, which these voucher do not require). The bill also gives priority to children in Foster Care (where one might wonder  who should be making such “choices” for children in Foster Care?).

In a nod to the parents of special needs recipients, who fought against the combining of their high risk children’s scholarship and the FES, DeSantis said “I didn’t necessarily ask for the change in Gardiner and McKay, so if we’re in a situation where we don’t think that the new students coming in are being serviced adequately we’ll be sure to make sure that we respond in the next legislative session.” Then he went on to celebrate:

“…at the end of the day, Florida has done more to provide families with choice in education, particularly our low income families, than any state in the country and we are proud of that … but I think the question before us for this legislative session is we’re not going to just stand pat and rest on our laurels, we’re going on offense, we’re going to expand choice, we’re not going to just be happy with the current amount of choices… We’re never satisfied. We’re always going to seek to do more. and today we’re expanding opportunities for tens of thousands of families throughout the great state of Florida.”

Florida’s Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, after his obligatory Frederick Douglas quote, claimed that the bill would, actually, make “anywhere from 1.2-1.7 million kids eligible to have that choice,” which he says will transform students’ (as well as their community’s and the entire state’s) “hearts, minds and souls.” For the record, currently, Florida’s 2,821 private schools serve just 397,970 or 12.2% of statewide total PK-12 student enrollment (the remaining 2,876,042 or 87.8% are public school students). An increase to 1.7 million is truly a massive increase.

Corcoran also said:

“If we want to save this Constitutional Republic for another 230 years , we have got to give a world class education to our students, we’ve got to give them that hope, we’ve got to give them that future… Governor, we can’t thank you enough for leading the way and making Florida the beacon of light, not just in Freedom but in Education for this country.”

Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez said the bill would “truly” change the educational landscape in Florida, claiming that “parents have been so desperate for choice.” She believes “Florida is not only on the right side of the issue but we’re on the right side of history.”

State Senator, and staunch advocate of privatization, Manny Diaz Jr vowed Florida would continue to “move forward and never settle,” claiming “Florida leads the way.”

Frankly, it is nice that they are finally saying it out loud.

Public Education advocates have understood, for a while, that “School Choice” is simply a euphemism for “privatization” and that the end goal is the defunding of public school and vouchers for all. (For more information, read “A Wolf At The Schoolhouse Door,” which documents the history of privatization efforts, across the country, intent dismantling our system of free, universal, and taxpayer-funded public schooling. Not surprising, Florida features prominently in the book.) Public Education advocates have also recognized that the privatizers will “never settle” for anything less that the complete privatization of publicly funded education.

Following HB7045’s first signing in Hialeah, Governor DeSantis was asked about the impact of voucher expansion on the diversion of money away from public schools. In response, DeSantis denied he was defunding public schools, referring to the 2020 Teacher Salary Allocation (which was less an infusion of new funding and more a re-shuffling of existing funding) as “the biggest increase in public school teacher compensation that we’ve seen in this state in a generation.” DeSantis noted that, in the face of Covid, he could have vetoed the salary mandates, but he didn’t. He noted this year’s budget (which has relatively flat overall funding for public schools) maintained and slightly increased the salary allocation and “oh by the way, we delivered a $1,000 bonus for every public school in this state” (For the record, the much appreciated $1,000 teacher bonuses this year are funded entirely from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.)

DeSantis said what he was doing was “blowing up all these tired old narratives”:

“We’re showing that we want parents to be able to obtain quality education for their kids and, you know what, the majority of parents in this state are going to avail themselves of the school in their local school district… I view it as all one big family, I don’t support scholarships at the exclusion of public education, just like I think it is wrong for people to say they will only support school districts and won’t support these choice programs. We’re supporting it all, because I think its important… we’re going to make sure all the education is as good as it can be, I don’t think it all comes in the same form, I don’t think it all is going to answer to the same bureaucracy but as long as that parent is happy with where that kid is going then I think our job will have been well done.”

Are they really “supporting it all?” As they say, budgets reflect priorities, and Florida’s 2021-22 Budget suggests the priority is NOT public schools:

• Despite the Legislature touting a one billion dollar increase in education funding and a $38 increase in per-student funding, the reality is that most districts will see a REDUCTION in funding with an overall decrease of roughly $200 per student.
• Florida Virtual School, which is expected to see a 6% DECREASE in enrollment, will see an overall 15% INCREASE in funding. 
• Private School Voucher/Scholarship funding, increasingly funded through the public school funding formula, will INCREASE by 20%.

Also, when the Governor says “we’re going to make sure all the education is as good as it can be” he doesn’t mean in any sort of academically or fiscally accountable way. The FES vouchers, along will all the other massively expanded vouchers in HB7045, require little fiscal accountability and even less academic accountability. As noted in the 2017 series, “Schools Without Rules,” Florida’s billion dollar voucher industry is poorly regulated and has, essentially, zero academic oversight.

Is parental happiness a metric that can be used to hold these schools accountable? Public schools have long known that many students leave for voucher schools, only to return (often behind) a few years later. In 2017, the Urban Institute released a study evaluating the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTCS), which is nearly identical to the FES except for its funding source. The authors discovered that 61% of FTCS recipients left the program within 2 years, 75% left within 3 years. It doesn’t sound like those parents are all that “happy.” According to the “Schools Without Rules” series, parents often use vouchers as a way to escape the onerous state mandated testing in public schools: “Escaping high-stakes testing is such a scholarship selling point that one private school administrator refers to students as “testing refugees.” If DeSantis believes “a job well done” can be measured by parental happiness, maybe he could focus on dismantling high stakes testing rather than dismantling public schools…

One thing is crystal clear, DeSantis, Corcoran and their legislative colleagues appear ready to continue marching until Florida becomes the first state without public education. Who is willing to try to stop them?