Vultures are Circling Over Our Brick and Mortar Schools

As we recently wrote, free-market economist Milton Friedman once said “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” In Florida, during the Covid crisis, there are LOTS of ideas lying around and Florida’s pro-privatization legislators are eager to move their ideas forward, whether Floridians want them or not.

The Covid pandemic has shined a light on the value of our public schools. 2020 is definitely turning out to be “The Year of The Teacher.”  In response to the crisis, in a herculean effort, teachers across Florida have transformed their lessons to the digital world, allowing our children to continue to engage and interact with them under these difficult circumstances.  We’re learning how very good teachers are at what they do- connecting, engaging and inspiring our children. But it isn’t just the teachers, though they remain the heart and soul of our schools…

We are also learning the value of our school buildings as the centers of our communities, and how important it is for children and educators to gather together in classrooms and school buildings. Our public schools are providing food and other services desperately needed during this crisis. Our kids want to be back in their schools, they miss their teachers, they want to physically interact with their peers and the adults, and we, as parents, want our kids there, as well. We want our kids at school, not just because they provide adequate supervision (though their value as child care to working parents cannot be overestimated), but because we realize their value to our child’s development and overall well being.

While families yearn for their children to return to physical classrooms, powerfully connected ed reformers are planning the further disruption of our schools. The disconnect is mind numbing.

Take, for example, a recent interview between Doug Tuthill and Senator Manny Diaz Jr for “PodcastED”, the podcast associated with redefinED.

RedefinED is a blog published by Step Up For Students, a non-profit created to administer Florida’s Voucher programs.  Doug Tuthill is the President of Step Up For Students. Step Up For Students was founded by Tampa billionaire, John Kirtley, who continues to serve as its chair. Kirtley also serves on the board of Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children and, over the past decade, has spent millions supporting pro-school choice/pro-voucher candidates in Florida. Senator Manny Diaz Jr is one of the legislators who has benefited from large campaign donations from Kirtley and the American Federation for Children. Diaz’s day job is as the chief operating officer of Doral College, a private junior college created by corporate charter school giant Academica to ensure dollars spent on dual enrollment remain in house. Diaz served 8 years in the Florida House before moving on to the Senate in 2018, where he, now, serves as the Senate Education Committee chair.

During their podcast interview, Tuthill and Diaz discussed their plans to ramp up their ed reform priorities in response to Covid-19. When Tuthill introduces Senator Diaz as the Chair of the Senate Education committee, he  says “thousands and thousands of children in Florida have benefited from his leadership” (side note: I found this kind of funny because Florida has approximately 3 million school aged children… but, then again, most of those kids attend public schools which, apparently, haven’t benefited as much from Diaz’s “reforms.”)

Tuthill and Diaz talked excitedly about the ways they might use the current crisis to further disrupt our public schools: the possibility of providing more flexibility to voucher schools, the expansion of Florida Virtual School, providing publicly funded vouchers to virtual schools, rethinking class size and attendance requirements, moving away from seat time towards Competency Based Learning, creating partnerships between public universities and private schools, and, of course, the ultimate goal of moving to universal vouchers in the form of ESAs or Education Savings Accounts. These are all ideas that have been floating around Florida for more than 20 years. Together, they imagine a time when brick and mortar days are optional. Diaz says “we could really see some innovative things flying in Florida… really put some nitrous in the engine in here and get us really flying on this.”

Tuthill is excited by the idea that “people are now saying homeschooling is public education.” (Who? Who is saying that?) For the record, Jeb Bush, Florida’s father of school choice/privatization, dreamed of the post-brick and mortar era of public education that Tuthill is so excited about:

“You keeping hearing people talk about we need to reopen the schools… The schools are open, the brick and mortar’s not open but school is open so it’s exciting for people to think about, yeah, education can be beyond simply brick and mortar and what are all the kinds of possibilities” – Doug Tuthill

Tuthill claims that Step Up’s voucher families are “jealous” of the flexibility available with the Gardiner Scholarship (Florida’s only current ESA for children with special needs) and asks Diaz “do you think you might want to think about ESA’s for the FTC (Florida Tax Credit Voucher), FES (Family Empowerment Voucher), the means tested programs?” (Silly question. Of course he does, this has been the dream of Jeb and his reform friends for 20 years.)

Diaz said: “My vision is taking it step by step and sometimes you have these events that cause acceleration and I think that this is a great point that you bring up, this not only talks about the virtual but it gives people an understanding of the freedom they get from an educational savings account… I think, in my view, our intention has always been to move in that direction (towards ESAs) because parents have evolved along with the choice movement and, you know, 20 years ago parents didn’t have these ideas, now they’re more informed and they’re also ready to have a larger menu of options because… again, some times it takes a crisis, unfortunately, to really accelerate things and I think that… I think we’re gonna see that here, Doug, I really do.”

The conversation closes with Diaz admitting that Florida has been moving down this path towards online competency based education and universal vouchers for 20 years and that the Covid-19 pandemic may be just the kind of major event needed to precipitate that move. In his final thoughts about the effects of Covid, Diaz says:

“I think its gonna result in some kind of neat policy changes that’s going to again, once again, put Florida in the forefront of ALL the education reforms and again I think its going to affect choice because… the demand for choice is going to increase as a result of this and regardless of which program it is, I think all programs, including the scholarship programs, are going to have to adjust to meet that demand, even if it is online.”

So there you have it, at a time when Floridians value their public school teachers and their brick and mortar public schools more than ever, Doug and Manny see the Covid crisis as a golden opportunity for Florida to move further and faster down the path to privatization. In the words of Raum Emanuel, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

The next year will be critical for our public schools. The Covid pandemic, and its economic impacts, will affect our schools and their budgets. They will need our support. At the same time, those (like Manny, Doug and their friends) who want to disrupt public education in favor of privatized options will be hard at work. They are, already, funneling dark money to political candidates that will help them “really accelerate things.”

How do we stop this? Every chance we get, we need to support our local schools.  They have value in our communities. Also, there is an election in November and, if enough people become a #FLPublicEdVoter, we have a chance to change the balance in the Florida Legislature. The legislators elected in November are the people who will be voting on Senator Diaz’s plans to further disrupt our public schools next session. Please vote wisely.