Family Empowerment Scholarship

Growth in Florida’s education choice programs accelerating

Doug Tuthill November 13, 2019

Doug Tuthill

Editor’s note: The data in this post are accurate as of 5:06 p.m. Monday, Nov. 11, 2019.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran announced recently that the state’s new Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) program, enacted with bipartisan support, reached its 18,000-student enrollment cap only three months after becoming law. No education choice program in the country has ever grown this large this fast.

The average income for a family of four on the FES program is $28,252.65. These are low-income families fighting to give their children a chance at a better life.

The number of low-income Florida families trying to access more education choices through our nonprofit, Step Up For Students (which hosts this blog), is accelerating. Last year, 170,471 low-income students started applications in our system before we turned it off. This year, 198,030 students started applications.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) has served 31,225 new students this year compared to 18,806 last year. The FTC and FES programs together have served 125,184 new and renewal students this year compared to 98,802 FTC students last year.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the funds to provide scholarships to every qualified student. We have 35,825 students who have been found eligible for FTC and/or FES scholarships but do not currently have a scholarship award because of insufficient funds.

The Gardiner Scholarship program for children with unique abilities/special needs is the third scholarship program SUFS manages in which demand far exceeds supply. With strong bi-partisan support, lawmakers gratefully funded 1,900 new Gardiner students this year. But demand is so high that by January we’ll have about 3,200 additional eligible Gardiner students who do not have scholarships because of insufficient funds.

A side benefit of more families having greater control over how their public education dollars are spent is small business development, especially in under-served urban communities. As enrollment in our five scholarship programs continues to increase, and as families are able to spend their scholarship funds on a greater variety of educational products and services, the number of small and medium-sized businesses benefiting is also increasing.

Over the last few years our scholarship families have purchased products and services from over 10,000 providers, including schools, tutors, occupational therapists, counselors, educational hardware and software companies, physical therapists, curriculum providers, and book stores.

Hopefully, when the Florida Legislature convenes in January, there will again be bipartisan support for more families having greater control over how their low-income and unique abilities children are educated. No child’s future should be put on a waiting list.

November 13, 2019 0 comment

Education politics factcheckED Family Empowerment Scholarship School Choice Tax credit scholarships

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarship not ‘a hit to public schools’

Scott Kent November 1, 2019

Scott Kent

Editor’s note: This post is another in our fact-checking series, one that focuses solely within the arena of educational choice. The goal of fact-checkED is to bring clinical precision to complex issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information before it continues to circulate.

An Oct. 30 news story in the Gainesville Sun about the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) included an uncontested assertion by the Florida Education Association that the new program will drain money from public schools:

Researchers from the state’s teachers union say according to their calculations with those averages, the program will pull $1.2 million to 1.3 million from the Alachua County School District and $2.2 million to 2.4 million from Marion County Public Schools.

“It’s a hit to public schools,” said Eileen Roy, Alachua County school board member. “Parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children. This is a very scary move, and we can’t afford to ignore it.”

The article continues:

Shortly after the program passed, the Florida Education Association projected that the scholarships would divert $11 million from Alachua County Public Schools over the next five years. For Marion County, they predicted a $19 million loss.

This is false.

It’s appropriate that this claim was published around Halloween, because it perpetuates what amounts to a ghost story aimed at frightening people.

Leave aside the school board member’s us-versus-them statement that “parents need to know that it’s $1 million less to help their children” – which completely ignores the low-income parents in her county who see the new scholarship as a way to help their children find the right education environment. Do they not count in her social order?

Instead, let’s focus on the math.

Florida has 18 years of financial data from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC), on which the new scholarship is modeled. Eight different independent fiscal impact studies have concluded the FTC saves taxpayer money that can be re-invested in public schools. Not a single study has shown otherwise. That’s because the value of the scholarship is less than what taxpayers spend per student in district schools.

A Florida Tax Watch report on the “true cost” of public education, released in March, determined the FTC scholarship in 2017-18 was worth 59 percent of all categories of per-pupil spending for district schools, which Tax Watch calculated to be $10,856.

The new FES vouchers, like the current FTC scholarships, average between $6,775 and $7,250.

Florida will spend about $130 million this academic year to award Family Empowerment Scholarships to 18,000 students. If you add the basic per-pupil funding increases over the last two years to update the Florida Tax Watch calculation from 2017-18, it would cost the state about $200 million to educate the same students in district schools.

It’s worth noting that the Florida Education Association was the lead plaintiff in a years-long lawsuit that sought to kill the FTC scholarship. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the suit in 2017, after a lower court found the plaintiffs couldn’t provide any evidence that the program harmed public schools. That included an “analysis” similar to the one the union has trotted out against the FES.

Finally, the state doesn’t pay school districts for empty seats in classrooms, regardless of why students left. If they move to another district, or out of state; if their parents decide to home-school them; or if they leave to attend a private school and their families pay tuition out of their own pockets, the impact on the districts in per-pupil funding is the same.

Oddly, it only seems to become an existential threat to public education when a low-income student takes advantage of a scholarship or voucher to attend the school of his or her choice.

November 1, 2019 0 comment

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Education choice a top priority for Legislative Black Caucus

Scott Kent October 29, 2019

Scott Kent

Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus, which includes 21 House members and six senators, emphasized the importance of education last week in Tallahassee.

When Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus unveiled its priorities for the 2020 session at a media conference Tuesday in the Capitol, it was unsurprising that PreK-12 education was among the first mentioned. What raised eyebrows, though, was the group’s acknowledgement that school choice should be a part of it.

“We believe in investing in public education,” said Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, the group’s chairman who also serves as the ranking minority member of the House Education Committee. “And we also believe in school choice.”

For many Democratic politicians and African-American leaders, school choice is the limburger cheese of the education deli (despite the fact that many of their constituents support it). So for Antone to publicly offer even a thin slice of it was newsworthy.

That’s probably why he quickly qualified his statement: “But in terms more so of school choice, in the public school system.” He likely was referring to magnet schools, perhaps also charter schools, although the latter have become politically volatile.

Still, that “more so” seemingly leaves the door cracked ever so slightly to other, more controversial, choice options, such as vouchers and education scholarship accounts (ESAs).

Some members of the caucus support opening it wider.

Rep. Wengay Newton, whose wide-ranging district includes South St. Petersburg and parts of Manatee, Sarasota and southern Hillsborough counties, was one of five caucus Democrats who voted in the 2019 session for SB 7070, the bill that created the new Family Empowerment Scholarship.

“School choice is a black choice,” Newton said Thursday. He sees it as a tool to help close the “school to prison pipeline,” whereby black students are statistically more likely to receive harsh discipline in public schools than their white counterparts. He cited Florida Department of Juvenile Justice data from 2017-18 on the number of school-related arrests for children of color in the Tampa Bay area – 603 in Hillsborough, 458 in Pinellas, 206 in Manatee and 91 in Sarasota counties. Many are younger than high school age.

“If an African-American kid gets in a fight in the southern part of St. Pete, that will result in them being sent to juvie jail,” Newton said, “but if it happens in an affluent part with a white kid, it will result in a suspension.”

Newton sees education choice as immediate relief for minority children who can’t wait for an unfair system to change.

“Parental school choice is a jet ski, while a traditional school is like a cruise ship,” he said. “If a kid falls off a cruise ship it might take 20 miles to turn around and rescue him. A jet ski can do a quicker response.”

To critics who charge that private school vouchers drain funds from public schools, Newton responds that tax dollars already are being spent on privatized juvenile justice. He would prefer those dollars provide low-income and minority students with education opportunities that will keep them out of the system.

“I told our chairman (Antone) that we can’t shackle black kids to this system,” Newton said. “If you’ve got cancer you need chemo. Robitussin isn’t going to do it.”

Newton said Antone’s rhetorical nod to choice, however modest, was not the result of any compromise negotiations with the caucus’ pro-choice members. Rather, it was an acknowledgement of the diverse opinions within the group.

“He’s saying you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for your district,” Newton said. “He’s letting members support other options. He wasn’t binding every member to support only public schools.”

He said that although a majority of the caucus has yet to support expanding choice, they have no desire to take it away from the nearly 120,000 students currently attending their chosen schools on the Florida Tax Credit and FES scholarships, some 35,000 of whom are black.

October 29, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education politics Education reporting factcheckED Family Empowerment Scholarship Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship School Choice vouchers

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarships are not the only state-funded voucher

Jon East October 18, 2019

Jon East

Julian Cruz, pictured here with his mother, Emily, was one of the first students to receive a Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs. The direct-state-funded scholarship now serves nearly 12,000 students.

Editor’s note: We add a new feature today, called fact-checkED, that is inspired by the many factchecking efforts across the media landscape these days. Our work will focus solely within the arena of educational choice, and our goal is to bring clinical precision to issues that are often complex and misunderstood. Our intent is not to shame but to inform.

In an editorial Sunday criticizing 19 “bad bills” that became state law this year, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote the following of a new school voucher called Family Empowerment Scholarships:

“Tuition vouchers (SB 7070). For the first time, money goes straight from (the) state treasury – not just by tax credits.”

This is false.

We begin by first acknowledging that the sentence above ends with a phrase describing the money as going “to unregulated private schools, most of which will be religious and can cherry-pick their students.” That’s a handful in itself, particularly given that the participating private schools are subject to roughly 17,000 words of statutory and agency regulations and that annual state evaluations of a similar program, called the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, have concluded it draws some of the state’s poorest and lowest-performing students from public schools.

But our focus here is on the claim that the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) is the first school voucher to draw funds directly from the state treasury. That’s in part because the claim has current legal and political salience. Ron Meyer, attorney for the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, has told reporters he plans to file a lawsuit asking courts to declare the new program unconstitutional. Even before the bill was passed, Meyer told the GateHouse Capital Bureau: “This could lead to the dismantling of the public school system as we’ve known it.” In June, a month after the bill was signed into law, he told the Florida Phoenix: “There is going to be a challenge.”

The Sun Sentinel editorial draws a proper contrast between the new FES program and an existing 18-year-old program called the Tax Credit Scholarship. Both serve disadvantaged students from low-income and working-class households, but the Tax Credit Scholarship is fueled by contributions from corporations. In turn, those contributions receive 100 percent credits against six different state taxes. Last year, the Tax Credit Scholarship served 104,091 low-income students at a cost of roughly $644.7 million. The funding distinction is important, and led in part to the 2017 dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Tax Credit program.

As the editorial notes, FES is funded directly by the state. In fact, it is funded directly out of the operational funding formula, known as the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), that pays for district public schools. One distinct difference between FES and district schools is that the scholarships receive money only through state general revenue dollars and do not receive any local property tax money (see subsection (11)(e) in the law).

The claim of being first, though, is wrong. FES is neither the first nor the only state-funded education voucher in the PreK-12 arena. It’s not even the only voucher funded directly through the FEFP. Here are the others:

The McKay Scholarship for students with learning disabilities. It was created two decades ago and last year served 30,695 students at a cost of $219.7 million. The students are tracked inside the FEFP from each school district in which they live, as is exhibited in this FEFP calculation sheet from 2018-19 (note the second column, which subtracts McKay dollars from each district). 1819 FEFP 3rdCalc
The Gardiner Scholarship for students with specifically named special needs. It was created in 2014 and served 11,917 students last year at a cost of $124.1 million. Gardiner is funded by a direct line-item appropriation (see line item 110 on page 28 of this year’s State Appropriations Act).
Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten for 4-year-olds. This program was approved by voters in 2002 and took effect in 2005. In 2017-18, it served 133,870 students in private schools and day care centers at a cost of roughly $326.2 million. The VPK program is funded by a direct line-item appropriation (see line item 89 on page 20 of this year’s State Appropriations Act).

To its credit, the Sun Sentinel published a partial correction to the editorial above. We rate the original claim as FALSE.

October 18, 2019 0 comment

Courts Education and Public Policy Education legislation Education politics Family Empowerment Scholarship School Choice Tax credit scholarships Unionism vouchers

Blaine amendments ‘discriminate against all religion’

Jon East October 2, 2019

Jon East

As religious and education interest groups furiously file amicus briefs in the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case on whether states can ban faith-based schools from voucher programs, a respected Catholic university professor is offering a remarkably dispassionate plea:

Don’t reject Blaine amendments because they were born of Catholic bigotry; ban them because they discriminate against all religion.

The argument posed by University of Notre Dame law professor Richard W. Garnett is part of an enticing new SCOTUSBlog symposium on Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The case may determine whether no-aid-to-religion clauses in 37 states, known as Blaine amendments after a Maine congressman who pushed them in the late 1800s, can be used to exclude religious schools from government-supported scholarship programs that allow students to choose private schools.

Garnett writes, in part:

“To be sure, anti-Catholicism was, is and has been from the beginning real in the United States, and it has long skewed constitutional doctrines and public debates about school funding and education policy. Still, it increasingly seems unhelpful – and, indeed, unhealthy – to construct and apply judicial doctrines that invite mind-reading for malice and that make the legality of legislative, executive or other official acts depend less on the harms they cause than on the motives, or even the character, ascribed to their supporters.

“Our political and legal climate and discourse are not well served by a hyper-driven hermeneutic of suspicion, and perhaps the court could help by, in this and other contexts, moving to judicial tests that do not incentivize accusations of bad faith or reductionist accounts of others’ aims. It is appropriate, of course, to take judicial notice of historical facts. Indeed, some cases are probably better decided with deferential reliance on tradition and longstanding practice than by application of clear-cut rules and tests. Here, though, a straightforward application of what (Justice Neil) Gorsuch called the “general principle” that discrimination against religion, as such, is not permitted by the free exercise clause unless it is required by the establishment clause is the court’s best bet.”

The Montana case is particularly relevant to Florida, given that state teacher union attorney Ron Meyer has told reporters he plans to file a lawsuit challenging the new Family Empowerment Scholarship that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in May. That K-12 scholarship aims to serve up to 18,000 students this fall with state-funded vouchers to private schools.

Though the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 overturned a direct-funded school voucher on the grounds that it violated a requirement that public schools be “uniform,” Meyer is certain to also argue that vouchers awarded to participating faith-based schools violate the state no-aid provision.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2002 that a Cleveland voucher program that included religious schools did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s church and state provisions, but it has not previously ruled on whether state Blaine amendments can be used to circumvent that decision. The court is expected to rule in the Espinoza case by summer 2020.

October 2, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Education and Public Policy Education equity Education legislation Family Empowerment Scholarship School Choice

Why one Democratic state lawmaker voted for educational choice

Lorraine McBride August 15, 2019

Lorraine McBride

State Rep. Wengay Newton, front row, right, with education choice advocates, families and children at a meeting Aug. 14 at the St. Petersburg College Midtown Center

At a Town Hall in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, State Rep. Wengay Newton kept it real.

More than a dozen advocates and constituents who live in or attend schools in his St. Petersburg district spent their evening hearing from one of the six Democrats who voted this spring in support of SB 7070, a bill creating the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES).

The bill is now law and provides state-funded scholarships to low-income and working-class families who want their children to attend a K-12 private school. Many families who are being awarded the new scholarship are from his district. Statewide, the new program is set to serve up to 18,000 students and to help reduce the waiting list for a similar program, the 18-year-old Tax Credit Scholarship, that is serving 100,000 students through tax-credited corporate contributions.

While speaking to the audience that gathered at the St. Petersburg College Midtown Center, Newton shared why he is so passionate about equal opportunity.

He began with his life story. Newton grew up in a single-parent household in the very district he now represents. He became a teen father and worked hard to provide for his family while completing school.

The countless hours he worked and studied paid off, and he soon found himself working in the real world – hungry for more of what life could offer.

His one-way ticket toward that destination was a quality education. It is now what drives his passion as a state representative.

Newton stressed the importance of preschoolers receiving fundamental preparation at home. Earlier this year, his bill, HB 2161, Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY), led to a $3.9 million appropriation for the program to help strengthen the parent’s role as the child’s first teacher.

Newton also talked passionately about his fear of the school-to-prison pipeline. To him, it is a real concern.

He provided for the audience some alarming statistics from a report shared by the State Department of Juvenile Justice 2017-18 report data. It cites an alarming number of school-related arrests for children of color in the Tampa Bay region – 603 in Hillsborough, 458 in Pinellas, 206 in Manatee and 91 in Sarasota counties.

Another report also highlighted what it sees as race-related disparities in schools. According to the ACLU, the industry recommends 250 students per school counselor, but the actual ratio in Pinellas is 441. For social workers, the industry recommends 250, but the actual ratio is 849. For psychologists, the recommendation is 500 to 700, but the actual ratio is 1,262. It claims there are dozens of schools that are not providing any of these services.

From that report, Newton asked the crowd to imagine a child with disciplinary problems in a school that is understaffed. He or she might end up with counterproductive discipline like expulsion, suspension and increase the risk of becoming arrested or dropping out of school.

That, he said, creates another child lost to the pipeline.

These are the life experiences, Newton told the audience, that cause him to support any education option that expands opportunity for economically disadvantaged children. He is a strong supporter of traditional neighborhood schools, but says he knows they can’t be everything to every child. The new scholarship he voted to support, he said, creates more options for students to be successful.

Katherine McNickle was one of his constituents in the audience that evening. Her granddaughter attends Mt. Zion Christian Academy in St. Petersburg, and she was grateful for Newton’s vote on the scholarship program.

“It means a lot to me to have Rep. Newton to do this for us,” she said. “My granddaughter has a scholarship and she wouldn’t be able to attend Mt. Zion without it. We are so happy.”

Advocacy groups like Florida Voices For Choices work closely with parents in support of school choice. The group hosts workshops and webinars on topics ranging from the scholarship application process to avoiding the “summer slide.” The group also connects parents from Newton’s district and beyond with resources and other non-profit groups that can better serve parents.

August 15, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Education and Public Policy Education politics Family Empowerment Scholarship Parent empowerment Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

Commentary: Parental choice is an effective form of accountability

Catherine Durkin Robinson August 14, 2019

Catherine Durkin Robinson

In a historic expansion of school choice in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signs into law May 9 a bill creating the Family Empowerment Scholarship, a new, state-funded voucher program.

Editor’s note: The Gainesville Sun editorial board, in an opinion posted July 28, called for greater oversight for private schools that will receive about $130 million this year from the state budget for a new voucher program. The editorial alleges these private schools lack accountability to ensure academic quality, a highly-trained teacher force and policies that prevent discrimination against students. Executive director of Florida Voices For Choices Catherine Durkin Robinson responded in a column the Sun published Tuesday, arguing that school accountability should be a balance between regulations and family choice.

In a recent editorial, The Sun equated regulation of education with quality academic outcomes. It ignores the fact that parental choice is an effective form of accountability — and a vital tool to equalizing opportunity.

For too long, district schools had a monopoly on teaching most of the students within their jurisdiction, and parents had no choice but to send their children to whatever school that district assigned. Since parents had no options, the theory went, schools needed tight regulatory and accountability standards. That’s the only way we’d know how they were working.

Those standards showed us that for millions of low-income, minority children, that system was not working.

School accountability should be a balance between regulations and family choice. And the evidence suggests Florida’s tax scholarship program has found a good balance. Even with far less funding, the lower-income students using the scholarships are generating better academic results.

To read more, click here.

August 14, 2019 0 comment

Advocate Voices Education equity Education politics Family Empowerment Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship Parent empowerment Parental Choice School Choice Tax credit scholarships

The fight for education equity continues as new school year begins

Lorraine McBride August 9, 2019

Lorraine McBride

Students and parents advocate for school choice scholarships in a 2015 advocacy event in Tallahassee.

As students begin returning to classrooms, I can’t help but notice that some parents are willing to risk it all for their child’s education.

Many are not satisfied with their current learning environment and have taken extreme measures for a chance to have an equal opportunity. Reports across the United States reveal that parents lie, cheat, and find loopholes to beat the system because they want their children to have a better chance than they did.

Recently, the Chicago Tribune reported that some parents are willing to give up their guardianship in order for their college-bound child to qualify for financial aid. A loophole in the system prevented some qualifying low-income families from not receiving their due funding.

A few years back, an Ohio mother lied about her address so her daughters could attend better district schools – and ended up in jail. Another mother, homeless and unemployed in Connecticut, was arrested for enrolling her 5-year-old son at an elementary school he wasn’t zoned to attend.

These parents’ actions highlight that policymakers aren’t doing enough to help public education fulfill the promise of equal opportunity.

The fight is not over. And Florida Voices for Choices will help them fight for their children.

Although all children from various socioeconomic backgrounds deserve a quality education, that education will look different for each family – because no one size fits all.

Some families can afford to move into neighborhoods that have A-rated district schools. Other families may opt to send their kids to charter or magnet schools if they are lucky enough to get accepted.

But many families don’t have the means to send their kids where they want. They may have an opportunity to receive a scholarship or voucher, but countless do not. These parents must fight to send their kid to a learning environment that works best for them.

In Florida, the fight continues to end scholarship waiting lists. Step Up For Students, the state’s largest scholarship funding organization, still has a growing waitlist for the Gardiner Scholarship, a program serving nearly 14,000 children with special needs.

More than 20,000 families applied for the scholarship this year, but there is not enough money allocated for the program in the state budget to fulfill demand.

Those parents need certain therapies for their kids, and many traditional schools don’t offer that. A scholarship could help them cover the cost. For years, they shared with lawmakers their desire to see an increase in funding.

Their fight is not over.

Nearly 18,000 other families will be getting off a waitlist this school year to receive the Family Empowerment Scholarship, a program that serves low- and middle-income families that might not have been able to afford tuition at private schools.

One of those parents is Mikekisha Turner, a single mom with three children who struggles to make ends meet in Miami. In Mikekisha’s neighborhood, many things aren’t accessible to all. She wants her children to be in a school with happy teachers. Without a good education, she knows her children will struggle in life. That’s why she believes equal opportunity means having the power of choice.

Mikekisha’s fight is not over.

That’s why training parents to advocate for policies that matters to them makes a difference. Advocate parents are more informed about options available to them and may not have to resort to extreme measures like criminal behavior in order to help their kids.

At Step Up For Students, my team’s role is anchored in grassroots mobilization. Florida Voices For Choices strives to expand the coalition of faith leaders, parents, and other advocates in support of school choice. We educate all advocates on policies, laws and threats that directly impact the scholarship programs. We train advocates to testify before legislative committee hearings, write letters to editors in their local newspapers, and participate in educational campaigns. We work together to help all children have a chance to succeed in varying educational environments.

Why?

Because we know the fight is not over.

August 9, 2019 0 comment

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