Paying For Services That Aren’t Provided

On March 6, 2019, after hearing public comment and committee debate on SB7070, the Senate Education Committee’s 2019 train bill, which includes (among other things) the creation of a new voucher program to be funded within the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), Committee Chair, and school choice advocate, Senator Manny Diaz, Jr., lectured the committee room:

The Family Empowerment Scholarship has no cost, I want to make sure we are clear on this, what some folks would advocate is that there is a cost to this but how can anyone stand here and say that they’re willing to send money to an institution, to a school, to wherever that is not providing a service, so we’re not taking money from anyone, these are tax dollars that belong to the taxpayers that we are appropriating so that the parent can make a decision and those dollars will go where that student is served. The money’s not being taken from anywhere or anyone.

I don’t think anyone on this dais is willing to say they want to pay for services they don’t provide.

No cost? That smells like accountabaloney… Lets take a closer look at the proposed funding of this new voucher and how it would impact education funding in Florida.

The proposed Family Empowerment Scholarship will be funded via the FEFP, at 95% of the “unweighted FTE funding amount at the district level for that state fiscal year.”  The “unweighted FTE funding amount” is calculated by dividing the Total Funding (in this case, for the district) by the number of students (the unweighted FTE). This represents the average amount of funding for students in Florida’s public schools, but fails to account for how that funding is allocated within the FEFP or its distribution is mandated.

Only about 60% of the Total Funding in the FEFP is calculated on a per pupil basis, and that portion (the Base FEFP Funding) is dependent not only on the number of students but their specific needs as well. The other 40% of funding is direct to specific function/activities/characteristics of the district’s themselves and may or may not be relevant to the private voucher school system.

Senator Diaz admitted the FEFP formula is complex. It is. The formula’s goal is to provide equitable funding and the formula, though complex, is often cited as a national model for funding equity.

We recently wrote an introduction to the FEFP.

The concept of the FEFP is simple, although, in practice, the formula is quite complex. Basically, each year the legislature (via the budgeting process) determines the Base Student Allocation (BSA), this represents the district’s flexible funding and is used for salaries, toilet paper, air conditioning, etc. The BSA is multiplied by the the Weighted FTE, which reflects both the number of students and their specific needs, and adjusted for cost of living variations (via the District Cost Differential, or DCD). The result is the District’s “Base Funding.”

Added to the Base Funding are various “buckets of money,” called “categoricals,” which are supplemental funding for specific purposes, like transportation, mental health, safe schools or digital classroom plans. Some supplements adjust for regional differences like sparsely populated regions or those with declining enrollment. The result of adding the base funding and all of the categoricals is the “Gross State and Local FEFP”; this is the “pot of money” that is funded, in part, by the Required Local Effort, i.e. your property taxes.

When you add Lottery-funded School Recognition/A+ funds ($134.5 million in 2018-19) and Class Size Reduction Funds (over $3 Billion in 2018-19), along with some Discretionary Local Effort funds (additional, non-voted property tax for local discretionary use, levied by the district), the result is the Total State and Local Funding. If you divide the Total State and Local Funding by the total number of students (the unweighted FTE, see below), you get the per pupil funding calculation, sometimes referred to as the FTE.

For 2018-19, the Total State and Local Funding for Florida was $21,059,308,344. Total number of students was 2,834,821.61. The resulting total Funding per student was 7,428.79. Of that, $4,204.42 came from the Base Student Allocation and the rest was from the various categoricals.

What does this mean? It means not all money distributed to schools is distributed on a per pupil basis so simply dividing the total funding by the number of students and sending 95% of that away with a voucher student to a private school may negatively impact local districts. With all due respect to Chair Diaz, to do so would mean the state was paying voucher schools for services they don’t necessarily provide.

For example:

BASE STUDENT ALLOCATION:

The Base FEFP Funding is calculated based on a per pupil basis (Base Student Allocation), but it is calculated on the WEIGHTED FTE, which takes into account a student’s special needs. If that funding was, instead, distributed to students based on the UNweighted FTE (as called for in SB7070 for the new vouchers), it would OVERFUND Basic Students (those qualifying for the basic 1.0 FTE) by $381.19.

FEFP CATEGORICALS

There are many funding categories within the FEFP Formula that might not apply to a student leaving the district for a private school. For Example:

• Declining Enrollment Supplement: provided to soften the impact of the lost revenue from having fewer students between one year and the next. Current funding is $9.38 million or $3.30.
• Sparsity Supplement: provided to sparsely populated districts to help ensure that the full range of services and course offerings is available in sparsely populated districts, particularly at the high school level. Current funding is $52.8 million or $18.62/FTE.
• Reading Allocation: funds are to be used for comprehensive, district-wide, research based reading instruction, including the additional hour of reading instruction in schools identified as low performing. Current funding is $130 million or $45.85/FTE.
• DJJ Supplementation Allocation: provided to school districts to supplement other sources of funding for students in juvenile justice education programs. The allocation to each district is determined by multiplying the number of weighted FTE in juvenile justice education programs by the state average class-size reduction factor and the district cost differential. Current funding is $7.44 million or $2.63/FTE.
• ESE Guaranteed Allocation: provides supplemental funding for students who have low to moderate handicapping conditions and/or are gifted students. These funds are provided in addition to the funds generated by each student’s basic program funding. Current funding is $1.07 Billion or $376/FTE.
• Virtual Education Contribution: supports virtual instruction for eligible students enrolled in virtual instruction programs. Current funding is $70 million or $24.70/FTE.

• Federally Connected Student Supplement: created to provide supplemental funding for school districts to support the education of students connected with federally owned military installations, NASA property, and Indian lands. Current funding is $13 million or $4.60/FTE.

• Transportation: these funds are used to transport students living more than 2 miles from school. Funding is based on enrollment, but the statutory allocation formula adjusts the funding to take into account students with special transportation needs, efficient bus utilization, hazardous walking conditions, rural populations, and other factors. Current funding is $443 million or $156/FTE.

It is possible that qualified voucher students might qualify for ESE Allocation, the Federally Connected Student Supplement or another funding category, but including portions of funding earmarked for these categoricals in this new voucher for ALL recipients would allocate funds to institutions NOT providing services.

STATE CATEGORICAL PROGRAMS:

There are also State Categorical Programs that definitely don’t apply to a student leaving the district for a private school

• Discretionary Lottery/School Recognition: The first priority for the use of these funds is to provide $100 per student to each school that earns an “A” grade, improves at least one performance grade from the previous year, or sustains the previous year’s improvement of more than one letter grade. Current funding is $135 million or $47.50/FTE.
• Class Size Reduction Allocation: funds are used for the operating costs of compliance with the class size requirements in state law and the Florida Constitution. Typically, these funds are primarily directed toward personnel and related operating costs. Current funding is $3.1 Billion or $1092/FTE.

Private schools are under no mandate to maintain Constitutional Class Size Limits and do not participate in the School Recognition program. These two categoricals account for over $3Billion or over 15% of Total Education Funding! Why are these allocations included in the calculation for the new voucher’s funds?

NEW SB7070 CATEGORICALS

If SB7070 passes, it would add new categoricals to next year’s budget:

• Best and Brightest Teaching Program: $423 million ($150/FTE) specifically to reward public school teachers based on FSA test scores and School Grade calculations – two things private schools do not participate in.
• Turnaround Schools Supplemental Services: early estimates would fund wraparound services with $500/student enrolled in struggling turnaround schools.

If a child leaves a school district with A Family Empowerment Scholarship/voucher, worth 95% of an unweighted FTE… they are taking a portion of money allocated for general ESE, money for children with extensive needs, transportation, class size reduction, School Recognition Funds, etc. If SB7070 passes, it will also include money specifically allocated for wraparound services for struggling public schools and public school teacher/principal bonuses.

It appears the Family Empowerment Scholarship/voucher DOES have a cost. By sending the average Total FEFP funding with a student to a private school, the legislature would be diverting money to a private institution, rather than to the students, institution and programs for which the funds were specifically designated. In many cases, funds never intended for that specific voucher student will leave the district with them.

This is the very definition of paying for services not provided. We don’t think anyone on the dais wants that.

If the Legislature insists on the expansion of private school vouchers, they should do so outside of the FEFP and in a way that doesn’t further defund our public schools. Claiming the Family Empowerment Scholarship has no cost is, frankly, accountabaloney.