Sacrificing Complexity for Convenience – HB7045

Yesterday, 4/8/21, the House Appropriations Committee held a rare evening meeting during which time they heard House Bill 7045. HB7045 is the House’s School Choice bill, which massively expands and reorganizes Florida’s existing voucher programs. It is the House companion to SB48 (which we have written about here, here and here).

When Florida’s legislators hear School Choice bills, they are used to hearing public comment from parents of scholarship recipients, who are trained (and reimbursed) to testify on behalf of voucher expansion. During public comment on HB7045, however, in addition to a handful of Florida Tax Scholarship recipients rising in support of the bill, almost a dozen Gardiner families, including Camille Gardiner, wife of former Senate President who championed the program and for whom it was named, spoke in clear opposition to the bill.

The committee members seemed stunned. Chris Latvala, R-67, Chair of the House Education and Employment Committee, said (at 1:08:00) he had never seen a meeting “where we have folks march up to the podium and ask us to oppose something that helps them.” He said that he didn’t want to question the motives of those who testified but he didn’t think they were “told the whole truth about this bill. There are 2 truths to this bill. The first truth is more families will be served. The second truth is more kids with unique abilities will be served.” He insisted more money would go to children on McKay and Gardiner and that “the bill expands choice for children with disabilities. That is a fact and that is a truth regardless of what folks standing at that podium say.”

“Members, there are truths and there are facts and the truth is this bill expands choice and it also expands choice for those with unique abilities and I suspect that folks that oppose this bill oppose it for other reasons than what they stated and they should be intellectually honest to be able to stand up at that podium and tell us the reasons why.”

Rep. Duran, D-112, (at 1:12:30) thanked the parents for attending and said he would not question their motives. He suggested the families were motivated to testify out of fear, “because maybe what we’re doing is something that’s transformational in a sense or it may make some very big changes and so there’s a lot of questions and a lot of concerns.” He thought they, the legislature, could, perhaps, do a better job of explaining “how is this going to help folks that are currently in the program and how it may help those in the future”

Why would these Gardiner families oppose this bill which these legislator claim would help them? Hmmm.

A hint may come from the Staff Analysis:

“The bill repeals the Gardiner Scholarship Program (GSP) and transitions students to the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program (FES).” The GSP is an Educational Savings Account for students with disabilities that provides flexible funding through publicly funded accounts. The FES is a tuition voucher program for children whose family meet certain income guidelines. The two programs serve different types of students and fund their educations in dramatically different ways.

Or perhaps the families were concerned when they read the bill, HB7045? You can’t get past the first page without seeing:

Hmmm… the bill repeals 1002.385. What is that…

… 1002.385 is the section of law that establishes “The Gardiner Scholarship.” Perhaps they couldn’t believe that this bill would actually repeal the entire program and they read further on in the bill…

Yep… it appears to completely repeal The Gardiner Scholarship statute, f.s. 1002.385.

Do you think they kept reading? If they did they would see every single place the Gardiner statute, s. 1002.385, was mentioned, it was replaced by s. 1002.394, the FES statute.

Can you blame these parents, who believe their special needs children’s lives have been transformed by the Gardiner program, for opposing the repeal of the program?

When Camille Gardiner testified (at 27:00) she warned “there are so many unintended consequences in this bill. This will be the beginning of chipping away at something this legislature set up to support our fellow citizens that have children with the most significant disabilities.” She asked, “Are we really prepared to tell these families that, in an effort to open up school choice, that we are risking the program that has been extremely successful in supporting them and their child. I urge you to be a champion for these families today and to either remove the Gardiner scholarship from this bill or to vote no on this bill”

Rep. Latvala challenged her testimony, saying “This bill is a companion of Senate Bill 48, and it was in 3 senate committees. This bill grandfathers in the Gardiner and McKay kids; Senate Bill 48 did not. And Senate Bill 48 was in 3 senate committees and I do not remember you testifying in any of those committees. This bill makes Gardiner stronger and makes the kids… makes the program stronger and so my question for you is ‘was there a reason why you never testified in any of the Senate committees and you waited to come here today to oppose this when we indeed made this bill stronger for these kids?'”

Has Chair Latvala read SB48? For the record, SB48 combines the Gardiner and McKay special needs programs into one “McKay-Gardiner Scholarship Program,” which remains separate from the income based voucher programs. SB48 does NOT repeal the program like HB7045 does. HB7045 transitions all Gardiner eligible students into the FEFP-funded FES.

Ms. Gardiner defended keeping the Gardiner program intact for Florida’s future special needs children: “as a community this is not just about us, this is not about what am I getting, this is about that family whose child is being born today, or tomorrow or next year, and what will be left of this program when we expand it to all these kids and we say “hey, wait a minute, now we’ve got to pare back services because the program’s too big.'”

Perhaps the best public comment of the evening came from Manatee County School Board member and founding member of Pastors for Florida’s Children, Reverend James T. Golden. Rev. Golden said (at 55:30), when the idea for these voucher systems were created:

“it came out of an educational system that was underfunded to begin with. You carved out these monies so that you could address the most critical needs of the most critical families in the state and now, today, they have to come here and beg to be allowed to benefit from the mistake you made 5 years ago, or 6 or 8 years ago, and now you’re going to double down on that mistake by bundling all of these scholarships that you offer for particular and specific reasons in the name of sacrificing complexity for convenience. That is not right. (Chair Trumbull interrupts with “10 seconds sir.”) I don’t need 10 more seconds, it’s not right. You need to do the right thing.”

Rev. Golden 4/8/21 House Appropriations

Sorry to say they did not do the right thing. HB7045 will move on to the House floor.