Why is Senator Diaz Minimizing the Impact of SB48?

ByAccountabaloney February 14, 2021February 14, 2021

Why is Senator Diaz minimizing the impact of SB48? Is he deliberately misleading the Senate? After SB48 was voted on favorably by the Senate Education Committee, bill sponsor Senator Manny Diaz Jr spoke to the press, describing the voucher expansion bill:

“The real story behind this bill is the consolidation, the streamlining to make it easier for the parents to access the program.”

This is NOT the real story of SB48. And I suspect Senator Diaz knows that.

“Streamlining” suggests the bill merely makes these programs more effective or efficient, when the real story is that SB48 radically transforms Florida’s current private school tuition voucher programs by converting them into Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are publicly funded edu-debit cards that can be spent on an array of education services, including (but not restricted to) private school tuition. This is the privatizer’s end game – the dismantling and unbundling of public schools.

Early during the pandemic, almost a year ago, Senator Diaz was interviewed by Step Up for Students’ CEO, Doug Tuthill, and he admitted that converting tuition vouchers to ESAs has been his goal for a long time and that the Covid crisis was a perfect time to “really accelerate things” towards ESAs. And so here we are, speeding towards radical transformation of Florida’s billion dollar voucher program.

Radical Transformation is NOT Streamlining

ESA are NOT private school tuition vouchers. ESAs unbundle the components of a public education and rely on parents to reassemble their child’s education:

Families may choose private school tuition, but they need not choose a school at all.
While teachers at participating private schools need not be certified, ESA recipients need not use teachers at all.
ESAs have no academic standards or graduation requirements. Parents may choose, for example, whether students take math, science or history classes.
ESA recipients may choose an annual portfolio “homeschool style” evaluation, skipping any standardized assessments, making academic accountability impossible.
SB48 allows individuals and corporations to divert portions of their taxes, within the State’s General fund, to a new fund called the “K-12 Education Fund,” which will ironically direct funds away from K-12 public schools. Corporations will earn valuable tax credits if they direct their taxes towards ESAs and away from their local public schools.
ESAs, through tax funded edu-debit cards, diminish the constitutionally mandated oversight of education tax dollars provided by duly elected school boards.
Step Up for Students (SUFS) currently manages the flexible spending for the Gardiner ESA, serving fewer than 20,000 students, funding a wide range of educational products, including private school tuition, therapies, computers and, even, TVs. If SB48 passes, SUFS will have to scale up their operations to serve, possibly, over 230,000 students, overseeing the spending billions of taxpayer dollars thru these ESAs, before the start of the next school year. Is it possible to expand so rapidly and ensure the appropriate use of public funds? Interestingly, SB48 also calls for a decrease in the frequency of operational audits from yearly to every three years. What could go wrong?

Again the questions must be asked: Why is Senator Diaz publicly minimizing the impact of SB48? Is he deliberately misleading the Senate? If the Senate is going to pass Legislation that radically transform Florida’s billion dollar voucher programs, the conversation, at a minimum, should be honest and transparent.

SB48 will be heard before Senate Education Appropriations on Wednesday, 2/17/21. It is important that its committee members understand what they are voting on. SB48 seeks to radically transform Florida’s billion dollar voucher programs.

Here is the contact information for Senate Education Appropriations members: