HB 1, the universal vouchers bill, is making its way through the legislative process. It eliminates the income cap on families qualifying for a voucher. Even billionaires will qualify for a voucher (subsidy) if HB-1 passes as proposed.
According to FL DOE School Choice website, 2,311 of 3,097 Florida private schools accept vouchers. Of those 2,311 schools, 1,598 voucher schools are unaccredited! I doubt those unaccredited schools are the ones the millionaires’ children attend. Those 1,598 unaccredited voucher schools are probably the ones whose tuition equals the amount of the voucher. Elite private schools’ tuition is thousands of dollars more than a voucher.
In previous years, 61% of voucher students return to public schools within two years. Was the tuition raised? Were promises not kept?
There is nothing stopping a voucher school from raising tuition. There is no requirement that the voucher funded private school be graded like the district-run and charter schools so parents can easily compare schools.
Public schools serve all students, but Step Up For Students (the funding organization the state pays to distribute the voucher money) continues to distribute voucher funds to private religious schools who break the federal nondiscrimination laws—even though by Florida statute, voucher funded private schools are required to follow some federal nondiscrimination laws.
Please ask your legislators to spend education dollars on increasing choices within each neighborhood school, increasing teacher salaries, increasing mental health counselors, decreasing student to teacher ratio, increasing funds for tutoring, etc. Make every neighborhood school excellent!
Tell your legislators to vote no on HB-1, the bill that will expand taxpayer funded vouchers so millionaires qualify. This Florida-NOW alert makes it easy:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/hb12023
This was written 2/1/2023 so there is a chance amendments will be filed to HB-1 subsequent to this post that will make the bill less egregious. Personally I can see the benefit for vouchers for kids with disabilities if the ONLY schools eligible for the vouchers are private schools that focus on disabilities and have a large endowment as part of their revenue source.
Other relevant information
Is it legal for private schools to discriminate based on sex and accept vouchers? I know some private schools are discriminating and accepting vouchers, but is it legal? Certainly it’s clear that it isn’t legal if the discrimination is based on race, color, or national origin since that is specifically mentioned in f.s. 1002.421
The current Governor, enabled by some of the legislators, is promoting laws that many of us see as illegal, but the only thing that can
apparently stop those illegal laws and activities is lawsuits.
Florida statute 1002.421 says this:
(1) A private school participating in an educational scholarship [voucher] program established pursuant to this chapter must …
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=1000-1099/1002/Sections/1002.421.html
(a) Comply with the antidiscrimination provisions of 42 U.S.C. s. 2000d.
The federal code that the state statute mentions says this:
Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
The above federal code doesn’t include “sex” but Title IX says:
Title IX states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance[.]” All federal agencies that provide grants of financial assistance are required to enforce Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate. Examples of the types of discrimination that are covered under Title IX include sexual harassment; the failure to provide equal athletic opportunity; sex-based discrimination in a school’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and programs; and discrimination based on pregnancy.
American Bar article says this:
It reasoned that employing the religious exemption in this case would allow a religious employer to convert any claim of discrimination to a case of religious discrimination so long as there was some religious reason behind the employment decision. Applying the exemption would erase protections against all other types of discrimination, including racial discrimination, sexism, gender discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, and xenophobia, and allow religious employers to completely bypass Title VII liability if they could prove their discrimination was related to a religious justification.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/intersection-of-lgbtq-rights-and-religious-freedom/what-the-supreme-court-giveth-can-religious-schools-taketh-away/
I am extremely worried about the move to privatize our educational system and allow these private schools to discriminate. Will the new Supreme Court overturn Brown (like they overturned Roe and other long standing precedents) as it relates to private religious schools that accept vouchers? Excerpts from Ashley Berner’s article:
The Supreme Court rulings reinforced its principles by limiting the practices of private schools, too, even those that had made a religious-liberty case for segregation
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/psychological-harm-and-school-choice
…judges like Barrett generally have been willing to strike down laws they don’t like. It is an echo of the so-called Lochner era of the early 20th century, when the Supreme Court threw out laws on the minimum wage, child labor or other business regulation. So get ready for a big, long fight over the American economy, with the Supreme Court at the center of it all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/briefing/amy-coney-barrett-voting-world-series-your-monday-briefing.html
