“When I’m Gone…”
“When I’m gone, when I’m gone… You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone….”
For the past week, Anna Kendrick’s “When I’m Gone” has been running running through my head.
A week ago, on 2/18/21, the House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee heard from a panel of superintendents regarding public school funding during the pandemic, concerns about “missing students” and their districts’ use of federal assistance in response to Covid. You can watch the meeting here.
Much of the conversation centered around the “missing students” – students who have not returned to their public school during the pandemic and are otherwise unaccounted for (i.e. not enrolled somewhere in private school, virtual school or registered homeschooling). Chair Fine began the meeting with a presentation on Florida’s school funding formula, the Florida Education Funding Program or FEFP, which funds schools based on the number of students attending and their specific needs. Fine repeatedly reminded everyone that, this year, Florida had funded “phantom students” and he wants to go back to funding based on student counts in the 2021-22 school year.
Fine, who repeatedly referred to public schools by the pejorative “government schools,” asked the superintendents:
“My question to you is this: Lets assume… that 40,000 of those students don’t come back because they are legitimately getting an education in a form other than yours, should we fund you all next year for those 40,000 students or should budgets go down because there are fewer students that are being educated in the system?”
Bay County Superintendent, Bill Husfelt, answered the question with a question:
“Do you want us to be prepared when they do come back and when are they coming back?… Can anybody tell me when normalcy’s going to come back? Are the vaccines going to work? Are the kids going to come back to school, which I think they will.”
Husfelt went on to explain that, without the stabilized funding offered to districts this year, he would have had to lay off teachers, which he described as “the opposite of what you’re trying to do with the economy.” He said he was afraid “if I start laying teachers off they’ll leave and I’ll never get them back.”
Husfelt also predicted tremendous need for remediation of students to get them back on tract after Covid, once again referring to Chair Fine’s question saying: “Do you keep funding? Well, do the kids keep coming?”
And this is why the song keep running through my head. Without funding, if the pandemic continues to suppress student enrollment, teachers will be laid off, many will permanently leave the profession, some public schools will be closed, communities will suffer and, despite what Chair Fine might think, I believe we’re gonna miss them when they’re gone.
Brief Background
- In “ordinary times,” Florida’s districts are funded based on the number of students attending their schools, and the specific needs of those children. (For example, a child with identified special education needs is funded more than a student without.)
- Students attending virtual schools are funded based on course completion, not physical attendance.
- Districts predict how many students (referred to as Full Time Equivalents or FTEs) that will attend in the upcoming year and budgets are created based on those counts. In the end, districts are only funded for the students counted attending in-person during specified “count weeks.” If the district over predict their FTE, and fewer students show up, then the excess funding is returned to the state. If districts under predict their FTE and more students show up, then (ideally, but not always) districts receive additional funding for those students.
- In preparation for re-opening schools following the Spring 2020 state-mandated shutdowns due to Covid, there was concern that the number of students choosing to attend virtually during the pandemic would dramatically impact funding, so the Commissioner of Education issued 2020-EO-06, and subsequently 2020-EO-07, which offered funding stability in exchange for, among other things, creating “innovative alternatives” to in-person learning.
- 2020-EO-07, also, encouraged districts to bring students back to campus if they weren’t being successful in the “innovative learning” option. Throughout the school year, the Governor has insisted that return to campus must remain a parent’s choice.
- The latest estimates suggest that nearly 40% of Florida’s nearly 3 million public school children are currently enrolled in those “innovative alternatives.” The funding stability offered 2020-EO-06 and -07 expires at the end of the school year. There has been no indication whether similar flexibilities and/or “innovative options” will be offered (or allowed) in the upcoming 21-22 school year.
- The nearly 40% of Florida’s nearly 3 million public school children who are currently enrolled in those “innovative alternatives,” as well as students attending private schools, Florida Virtual School and registered homeschool, are NOT included in Chair Fine’s count of “phantom students.”
During the panel discussion, district superintendents outlined their extensive efforts to locate the thousands of unaccounted-for students and return them to the classroom. They described locating dozens of children in migrant camps and suggested that other families were homeschooling, or essentially “unschooling” their children because, according to Superintendent Husfelt, “it was too easy to check the box and say I’m going to homeschool and leave me alone.”
Rep. Melony Bell (R-56) told a pre-Covid personal story of a family member with mental illness who refused to send her children to school. Bell called for harsher penalties, holding parents of truant children accountable because, without an education, their children suffer. Rep. James Bush III (D-109), concerned about the school-to-prison pipeline, said we need to do “whatever it takes” to find these children and hold families accountable for getting them back in school.
Chair Fine went so far as to call truancy, or what he called “pretend homeschooling,” a form of child abuse. In his press availability following the meeting, he called for harsher penalties for parents of truant children, suggesting cases of truancy should be treated as a form of child abuse.
The interesting thing about all the committee members’ concern was that on 2/17/21, less than 24 hours earlier, the Senate Ed Appropriations subcommittee advanced SB48, a bill which transforms Florida’s billion dollar plus (annually) voucher program into Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, which provide tax funded education accounts to families, trusting they know best how and whether their child should be educated. ESAs are the equivalent of publicly funded edu-debit cards that can be spent on an array of education services, including (but not restricted to) private school tuition. ESAs are the privatizer’s end game – the dismantling and unbundling of public schools. In order to qualify for these ESAs, the student must unenroll from public school. With ESAs, private school attendance is optional. Families can purchase educational products and services from an e-commerce website. Current Florida’s ESA recipients have reportedly used their tax funded accounts to purchase gaming consoles (Nintendo and PS-5s), TVs, Apple Watches and exercise equipment, like swing sets, treadmills and Peletons. There will be little to no fiscal transparency. The ESA’s e-commerce site will be maintained by a politically connected non profit, who has no obligation to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. There are no academic standards or curricular requirements. The state provides no academic oversight. SB48 even makes annual standardized assessments optional for these students. While it is possible that some (many?) of the new ESA recipients will spend their funds wisely, there is nothing to stop others from taking the money and unschooling, or “pretend homeschool” as Chair Fine refers to it.
There is officially no House companion to SB48, yet, but one is rumored to be in development and is reported to be much more radical than SB48. It will be interesting to watch Chair Fine and his committee members discuss and debate how to hold parents of ESA recipients accountable for school attendance and how to ferret out those who are merely “pretend homeschooling.”
Chair Fine closed his meeting with a brief wrap up:
We learned 2 things today… the first thing we learned in there are thousands of students actually missing and it seems like people are making a real effort to try to find them… and those kids, forget the money, their lives are going to be destroyed by not going to school… so we have to make sure we’re holding people accountable and we’re giving the people the tools to do that, because its a guaranteed prison pipeline if you don’t go to school… that’s the first thing. The second thing, though, some of these kids… they are gone because their parents want them to be. I believe that some of these kids who’ve gone to virtual school… when Covid’s over, they may have changed how they live. Many of us are not going to go to movie theaters ever again, we’ve gotten used to watching TV. But Covid will change us. And so many of these students are never going to come back because they’ve got other good options. They’re really getting homeschooled, or they’re going to a private school or they’re going to virtual school and I think you all need to be prepared and we need to be prepared to accept the fact that the enrollment numbers may be down forever, not because they’re missing but because they’re gone with justifiably alternative good options… and that’s something we need to think about as we do the budget.
1:55:00 https://thefloridachannel.org/videos/2-18-21-house-prek-12-appropriations-subcommittee/
Chair Fine envisions a post-Covid future where no one goes to the movies and public schools are decimated. And he wants us to simply “prepare to accept that” as fact. (Would this be a good time to remind him that, as a legislator, it is his paramount duty adequate fund uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools?)
I try to imagine my community in the absence of our public schools and the earworm starts again…
“You’re gonna miss me by my walk. You’re gonna miss me by my talk, oh, You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
This is a good time to stand up in defense of public schools. We’re all going to miss them when they’re gone.