Gardiner Scholarship

Even out here, education choice for Eli

Ron Matus December 4, 2019

Ron Matus

Eli Conner, shown here with his mother, Stephanie Conner, and his sister, Madeline, benefits from the flexibility offered by the Gardiner Scholarship, Florida’s education savings account for students with special needs. The Conners have crafted an education regimen that includes therapy, home school and private school for Eli. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Editor’s note: To learn more about Eli and to hear his story in his mother’s words, please watch the video at the end of this post.

LaBELLE, Fla. – In his family’s backyard, Eli Conner, 13, wobbled across a 20-foot tightrope, pretending to be the hero in a rescue scene from a “Despicable Me” movie.

Using foam hand grips hanging from another rope, he pulled himself toward a big oak at the end of the line. “You’re getting closer,” encouraged his mom, Stephanie Conner. “Now touch the tree.” Eli finished with a triumphant tap.

“One handed,” said Mom. “Nice.”

Eli, who communicates mostly through sign language, has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and other developmental delays. A few years ago, he was scared and struggling in a traditional school. A few weeks ago, he couldn’t do the tightrope.

Now he can.

And now, thanks to a cutting-edge education choice scholarship, his family is confident they will see his growth continue to accelerate.

Even in this remote town near the Everglades, there are more educational resources than meet the eye. It just takes the right tool to assemble them. The Conner family did that with the Gardiner Scholarship, Florida’s education savings account for students with special needs. It gave them flexibility to devise an education regimen – therapy, home school, private school – that was just right for Eli.

The scholarship, Stephanie Conner said, “changed everything.”

The Gardiner Scholarship has allowed Eli to gain a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time for each of the past three years. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Stephanie Conner describes herself as a stay-at-home mom. She is a former public and private schoolteacher. Her husband, Joel Conner, is a graphic artist and adult education teacher from a family of educators, including his father, a former superintendent of the local public schools. The Conners have four children, three of them adopted. All four use education choice scholarships.

Eli and his sister, Madeline, 9, use the Gardiner Scholarship, the largest education savings account program in America. Created by the Florida Legislature in 2014, it now serves 13,112 students, including 449 in rural counties. Three thousand more are on a wait list. The Conners’ 5-year-olds, Meizi and Gideon, use the new Family Empowerment Scholarship for working- and middle-class families. Created by the Legislature this year, it’s already reached its cap of 18,000 students.

Without intending to be trendsetters, the Conners are using the Gardiner Scholarship in a novel way that underscores the potential for schools to unbundle their services – and better serve families. (More on that in a sec.) Their experience also shows the upside of giving parents more power to shape their children’s educational programming – even in rural areas – where myths about education choice not being viable persist despite this, this and this.

LaBelle, pop. 4,640, is not postcard Florida. It’s laid-back, fringed with cabbage palms, a pit stop between Lake Okeechobee and Fort Myers. It’s also the county seat of Hendry County, a patch of farm country blanketed by sugar cane that holds fewer humans per square mile than Kansas.

The Conner kids are fourth-generation Hendry County. They have plenty of family nearby, which is why, pre-Gardiner, the Conners were on the verge of a heart-breaking decision. Family? Or therapy? To be closer to the therapists Eli needed, they kept thinking they’d have to uproot to the city. “It was always a terrible feeling to have to even consider giving up one or the other,” Conner said. “Family support, when you’re dealing with special needs, is indispensable.”

Thanks to the scholarship, they never had to make that choice. This is Eli’s third year using the Gardiner Scholarship, and the first for Madeline, who has been diagnosed with bilateral congenital deafness.

The combination of therapies, home school and private school have been the perfect combination for Eli. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Like growing numbers of parents with education savings accounts, the Conners are “customizers.” They use the funds to mix and match educational products and services in addition to, or beyond, school. In their case: home school materials; therapy sessions and equipment (for speech, occupational and sensory integration therapy); and partial tuition at International Christian Academy, a private school a block from their home.

Several times a year, Stephanie Conner takes Eli to Orlando for three weeks of intensive therapy. The rest of the time, she does daily therapies with Eli and Madeline, many involving tools purchased with Gardiner funds. “Peanut balance balls” help them both improve motor skills. A microphone helps Madeline better enunciate words. An array of spoon-like tools helps Eli with his speech, with Mom using them to strengthen muscles in his mouth.

For Eli, the positive effects spill over into academics. Depending on the subject, his proficiency ranges from a first- to fourth-grade level. He reads at a third-grade level. But over the past three years, he’s gained a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time. And sensory integration therapy has made it possible for him to learn in more settings, from field trips to classrooms. “His ability to sit still and not be overwhelmed by sights and sounds … has allowed him to participate,” Conner said.

The private school piece is key. So is the way the school offers its services. The youngest Conners go full time. Eli goes for PE, lunch and a science/social studies class. Madeline goes for PE. For the older siblings, the school charges partial tuition. It has unbundled its services in a way that more and more parents will appreciate and other schools, public and private, would be wise to consider.

“If someone wants to be part of our school, I’m going to let them,” said International Christian Academy founder and principal Tracy Co. “I thought it was a good fit for them and it’s worked.”

The school serves 80 full-time students in K-12. More than half are non-white. More than 80 percent use state scholarships. (Sixty use either the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students or the Family Empowerment Scholarship. FTC, FES and Gardiner are administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Eli has been warmly welcomed. During a recent kickball game, his classmates erupted in cheers when he booted a low liner up the middle. At first base, he fist bumped the coach.

The boost to Eli’s social skills is also bolstering his academics, giving him more confidence and more ability to focus and learn, Conner said. Between therapies, home school and part-time private school, she said, “this has just been the perfect combination.”

Perfect combinations really are possible. Even out here.

December 4, 2019 0 comment

Analysis Education legislation factcheckED Funding Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship Private Schools School Choice Tax credit scholarships vouchers

fact-checkED: This ‘quick fact’ about scholarships hurting public schools is no fact at all

Jon East November 26, 2019

Jon East

A story in Sunday’s Lakeland Ledger about a union-sponsored public education summit in Polk County included a chart of “Quick Facts” that bears scrutiny. One of them, about the financial impact of Florida Tax Credit Scholarships, is false.

The statement: “In 2018, tax-credit scholarship programs totaled $1.058 billion, money that went to private and religious schools that could have gone to public schools.”

First, the total dollars are off. According to the state Department of Revenue, which tracks tax credits awarded under the scholarship law, companies received permission in 2018-19 for tax-credited contributions of $689.3 million. Those dollars translated into scholarships for 104,091 lower-income and working-class children to attend 1,825 private schools in that same year, according to the Department of Education.

The $1 billion figure may well include money spent on two voucher programs – McKay and Gardiner Scholarships – for students with special needs that are funded directly from the state treasury, but it is nonetheless misleading.

The more substantive claim, though, is that the money “could have gone to public schools.” This is at the core of a longstanding and erroneous argument – that vouchers harm public schools financially – offered by the Florida Education Association. In fact, FEA lost a 2014 legal challenge to the Tax Credit Scholarship in large part because it could prove no such harm.

In that case, McCall v. Scott, the FEA argued that public schools “have been and will continue to be injured by the scholarship program’s diversion of resources from the public schools.” The Leon Circuit judge who heard the case, George Reynolds, offered union attorneys the chance to amend their complaint to provide facts that bolstered that claim.

They declined, and Reynolds dismissed the case, writing: “Whether any diminution of public school resources resulting from the Tax Credit Program will actually take place is speculative, as is any claim that any such diminution would result in reduced per-pupil spending or in any adverse impact on the quality of education.”

On appeal, the union lawyers went a step further and asserted the scholarship program cost public schools $300 million in 2013-14. But the state education budget that year increased by $1 billion and per-student funding went up by 6.3 percent, leading First District of Appeal Judge Lori Rowe, during oral arguments, to ask: “But exactly what is the special injury you are articulating here? You haven’t alleged that any individual student is suffering. You haven’t alleged that per-student funding has been reduced. You haven’t even alleged that the education budget has been reduced.”

Outside the courtroom, eight different independent financial studies have all concluded the scholarship saves tax money that can be used to enhance public schools. That’s because the state spends less to educate these students on the scholarship than it otherwise would spend in a traditional public school.

In March, Florida TaxWatch added to that body of research with a report on what it called the “true cost” of education in 2017-18. TaxWatch went beyond the basic operating formula used to fund public schools and added all the other appropriations as well. It found the state spent $10,856 to educate the average student in public school, and contrasted that amount with $6,447 spent on the average Tax Credit Scholarship student. In other words, the scholarship cost 60 cents on the public school dollar.

One final note: Amid the lawsuit challenging the Tax Credit Scholarship in 2014, Nan Rich, a former state senator, made a similar claim about scholarship programs pulling money out of public schools, and PolitiFact Florida rated it “mostly false.”

We rate this “quick fact” to be false.

November 26, 2019 0 comment

Analysis Bipartisanship Education and Public Policy Education equity Education legislation Family Empowerment Scholarship Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship School Choice vouchers

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 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

Customization Education equity Gardiner Scholarship Parent Voices Parental Choice School Choice Special needs education Voices for education choice

Commentary: Florida needs more scholarships for special needs students

Special to redefinED October 17, 2019

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: Amanda Bryant of Polk City and her husband are raising nine children, six of whom are homeschooled and three of whom have special needs. Bryant wrote this commentary for the Lakeland Ledger explaining her family’s reliance on the Gardiner Scholarship, which provides education choice to families of special needs children regardless of income.

When it comes to blended families, “The Brady Bunch” has nothing on mine.

My husband and I are parents or guardians to eight children under our roof. We also have a daughter who is away in college.

Six of them are home-schooled. Four of those are the children of my late sister-in-law. Two are my (very) younger sisters, who needed a more stable home life than what my mother could provide them.

Three boys have special needs: Eli, 14, has cystic fibrosis. He and his biological brother Ellis, 12, were both born with common variable immune deficiency (CVID), which makes them highly susceptible to infections. Ellis also has been diagnosed with level 2 autism. Their adopted brother, Easton, 6, is developmentally delayed. He has been diagnosed with apraxia of speech disorder (AOS) and is being tested for autism.

Eli and Ellis briefly attended public schools in their early elementary years, but their health issues eventually made it impossible to continue. They missed too much time being ill, and they were unable to obtain all the services they required. Home schooling is by far their best option. Easton is beginning kindergarten at home.

Commentary: Gardiner Scholarship provides crucial support for children with special needs

Special to redefinED September 17, 2019

Special to redefinED

Florida Gov. DeSantis, flanked by Andy and Camille Gardiner and their son Andrew, reiterated in February his pledge to end the waitlist for special needs children who have qualified for a state-funded Gardiner Scholarship.

Editor’s note: In this commentary, published Sept. 11 in the Naples Daily News, the mother of a child with autism tells of her family’s decision to leave their home in Puerto Rico for the mainland so she and her husband could get better jobs and their son, Omar, could get the educational instruction he needed. Shortly after arriving in Naples, the couple learned about the Gardiner Scholarship for children with special needs, which allowed them to enroll Omar in the Montessori Academy of Naples.

Arely Burgos and her son, Omar

More than two years ago, my husband and I left our native Puerto Rico because we were searching for better opportunities for our young son, Omar, who is on the autism spectrum.

We found them in Naples, thanks in large part to Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship for children with special needs.

The Gardiner Scholarship, created in 2014, serves students with autism, Down syndrome, spina bifida and other special needs, regardless of their family’s income. Although the scholarship amount varies by county and grade level, the average amount for most students this school year is $10,400. That money can be spent on private school tuition, therapists, specialists, curriculum, and technology. The program will benefit more than 13,000 students this school year.

Unfortunately, there are 4,000 more on a waiting list for scholarships. They deserve to experience the kind of relief Gardiner brought us.

Omar was diagnosed with autism when he was 1-1/2 years old. Now 5, he’s intellectually very high above his age. He reads and writes, and he understands Spanish and English. However, he struggles with comprehension. For example, if he falls down and gets hurt he can’t describe his pain. He requires occupational and speech therapy on a weekly basis.

Ed choice scholarship was ‘a Godsend’

Special to redefinED September 14, 2019

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: Each Saturday in September, redefinED is dipping into the archives to revisit a compelling story written from the perspective of a parent advocate. Today’s post features a mom who utilized a Gardiner Scholarship to provide her special needs son with educational resources he would not have received otherwise.

We had become parents a second time. This time it was a boy.

Kevin was a vivacious, wonderful baby full of laughter and joy. His development took the usual course. He was a bit behind in language, but we were told it was of no concern yet. A littler later, however, we noticed Kevin had repetitive behaviors, was lining his toys up and, well, had a very strong “personality.”

When we sought the assistance of a speech therapist, she referred us to Early Steps, an organization to screen autism.

The day we were told our son was autistic, my husband and I were shocked by the words, but at the same time we knew.

We immediately began therapies to help his speech and decided to place him in a public school program for pre-schoolers with autism.

At the time, we were completely satisfied with his progress. We found that he adapted well to the learning environment.

However, with our move, we had to change schools. Furthermore, once he exited the pre-kinder autistic class, where there were only five children and two instructors, he was assigned to an inclusion class with 25 students and only one instructor and a “floating” inclusion teacher.

Kevin was left soiled, was not fed for over a month, and continuously eloped to the parking lot.

We finally decided to place Kevin in an ABA center to help him with his behaviors, which were seriously impeding daily life.

Since the ABA was six hours a day, we decided to register him in homeschool. At first, this was very difficult, but when I learned the Gardiner Scholarship helped families like us, we were immediately alleviated.

The Gardiner Scholarship is an education savings account for students with special needs such as autism and Down syndrome. It has been a Godsend to our family. Not only do I have the ability to choose homeschool for my son, I have resources that I would not have been able to afford to give him otherwise.

The public sector is not a good fit for Kevin, who is now 9 years old, as his needs extend beyond what it can provide.

Now I have the tools and resources to provide my son with diverse curricula, private tutors, sensory and physical materials, and technological devices.

I attribute the great strides Kevin has made in his development to the Gardiner Scholarship. It enabled us to help him not only become verbal, but fluent.

I cannot imagine a world without Gardiner.

Ana Garcia is a mother in Homestead, Fla.

September 14, 2019 0 comment

Demographic Research Education Research Education savings accounts Gardiner Scholarship Home schooling Parental Choice School Choice

Should homeschool parents support school vouchers?

Patrick R. Gibbons September 6, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

While recent national data suggest homeschooling growth may be slowing, a report issued this week by the Cato Institute concludes that the homeschooling population is increasing many times faster than the K-12 public school population in a number of states with particularly favorable education choice programs, including Florida.

The report, “Homeschooling and Educational Freedom,” by Kerry McDonald of the Foundation for Economic Education, makes the case that school choice is good for the homeschool movement.

Sources: Florida Department of Education, North Carolina Department of Administration, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Ohio Department of Education, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

A deeper dive: Although the homeschool student population has doubled since 1999, enrollment is beginning to decline. Between 2012 and 2016, the latest data available, the home schooling population declined by 4.7 percent, while public school enrollment increased 1.6 percent. But several states leading the school choice movement are bucking that trend.

Who homeschools: Popular opinion sees homeschoolers as overwhelmingly white, rural evangelical Christians. But homeschooling has been embraced by the progressive left as well. The old stereotype is giving way as minorities increasingly are embracing home education, while homeschool students have become more urban and financially diverse.

Where homeschooling is growing: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin all have robust charter school and school voucher programs, including several tax credit scholarships and education savings account (ESA) programs. These are states where homeschool population growth has greatly exceeded growth in public schools.

Florida, for example, offers the Gardiner Scholarship, an ESA program for students with special needs. The scholarship can be used to purchase school supplies and curriculum as well as fund dual enrollment courses and help pay for Florida Virtual School tuition.

Regulations in choice-friendly states may also play a role, such as allowing homeschool students to participate in clubs or sports at their local public school.

Why it matters: Texas, a Republican-controlled state with a meager charter school program and no vouchers, has seen homeschool parents ally with school district leaders to oppose expanding school choice through vouchers. Such home education parents have argued that vouchers would bring more regulations and scrutiny from the state legislature, ultimately hampering parents’ freedom to educate their children.

But McDonald’s findings suggest such opposition by homeschool parents is wrongheaded.

She speculates that there could be a peer effect with school choice. The more choices available, she suggests, the more people exercise a right to choose the education environment for their child, including the option to homeschool.

Writes McDonald: “Homeschoolers should support education choice programs, whether or not they are personally included in such programs, because more choice can lead to more homeschoolers overall.”

September 6, 2019 0 comment

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