Hiding in Implementing Bills: Massive Voucher Expansion.

While everyone is abuzz about minimum teacher salaries and another teacher bonus plan, Governor DeSantis is planning a massive expansion of his Family Empowerment (FES) voucher program. Neither his budget press release nor his Education Budget Overview mention the voucher’s expansion. Details of the Governor’s plan can be found in the Governor’s Budget Recommendation Conforming bills, specifically the bill entitled “The Family Empowerment Scholarship Program,” which can been found at approximately page 87 of a 174 page document.

Here are the details of the Governor’s proposed expansion:

• Expands the eligibility to include any “dependent child of a member of the United States Armed Forces who transfers to a school in this state from out of state or from a foreign country due to a parent’s permanent change of station orders.” Question: Do military families desire publicly funded access to private religious schools which are under no obligation to adhere to state education standards or comply with federal special education requirements? It wasn’t too many years ago that we were being told that one big advantage of national “Common Core” standards was that no matter where a military child moved, they would remain at the same point on their educational path. Now, are we to believe military families want schools without any academic oversight?
• Expands eligibility, for the 2020-2021 school year, from just kindergarten to kindergarten through second grade for students who have never attended public school. In 2021-2022, such eligibility will be extended to kindergarten through fifth grade. We were told families needed these vouchers to “escape failing schools” but soon the majority of FES voucher students will never have attended public school at all. Such a scenario will no longer represent students with “backpacks full of cash” leaving public schools, but rather public school students emptying their backpacks, forced to give some of their cash directly to private school students.
• Expands eligibility to include students who “received a scholarship from an eligible non-profit scholarship-funding organization or from the state during the previous school year” (does this include Reading Scholarships offered for after school tutoring for struggling readers?). Will this allow students to move back and forth between programs depending on current funding and availability?
• Allows regular increase of income eligibility caps. Currently, initial scholarship eligibility requires the student’s household income does not exceed 300 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $77,250 for a family of 4). The new proposal allows, if the State Board of Education (FLBOE) determines that 90% or more of the maximum enrollment has been reached, then the FLBOE may increase the maximum household income by 25 percentage points for the next school year (up to $83,688 the first time, then up to $90,125 the next time, etc., etc.). There is no permanent cap to household income eligibility.
• Doubles the rate of automatic increase in enrollment. The FES voucher was established last session to serve 18,000 students with an automatic increase of 0.25% of the state’s total public school enrollment (about 7,500 students/year). The Governor’s new proposal doubles the annual increase to 0.5% of the state’s total public school enrollment (about 15,000 students).
• The proposed bill would take effect July 1, 2020.

Keep in mind, this Family Empowerment voucher is directly funded via the Florida Education Finance Program (or FEFP). FES vouchers allow recipients to attend private, primarily religious, schools using public funds, including local tax dollars. When voucher spending within the FEFP increases, sending more public funding to private schools, such increases can be hidden within the FEFP and even celebrated as an increase in public school funding. By funding the FES through the FEFP, the true cost to a community is obscured; there is no line item in either the state or a district’s budget for FES/private school vouchers. Local taxpayers may be unaware of the extent their property taxes are being used to fund private religious education.

Floridians, don’t be distracted by the teacher compensation brouhaha. Education funding and teacher compensation is important, of course, but while we are focused on that, the state appears ready to give it all away through ever-expanding private school vouchers.