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tax credit scholarships

Parents consider private schools as district reopening plans continue to churn

Lisa Buie July 30, 2020

Lisa Buie

Among Florida private schools with open seats for families looking for brick-and-mortar education is Compass Outreach and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale, which will offer a full-time, in-person micro-school.

The text on the website banner of Children’s Educational Services, a North Florida non-profit company that operates private schools, broadcasts this message to families:

“You should have peace about where your child goes to school. Your child’s future is too important to remain uncertain about their education.”

As school districts continue to push back reopening dates amid uncertainty about when and how they will reopen (here, here and here) and a state order to reopen brick-and-mortar schools is facing a court challenge, some parents are feeling anything but peaceful as they search for options.

Many families want – or in the case of working families need – in-person instruction, with the expectation that schools will ensure their children’s safety. In Palm Beach County, where the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, 54 percent of parents expressed support for in-person instruction in a district survey. About two-thirds of Marion County parents recently said they planned for their children to return to the classroom.

While some families are joining together to form pandemic pods, pooling their resources to hire a teacher for in-person instruction at home, this can be a costly option that’s out of reach for families with more modest incomes. Many of those families, though, are turning their attention to a new idea: transferring their children to a private school, in some cases with assistance from a state scholarship.

It’s the proverbial “win-win.” Private school numbers have dipped since COVID-19, creating more space. Families want their children in a “real” classroom with adequate social distancing.

San Jose Catholic School in Jacksonville, which serves students from 3-year-old pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, is eager to let families know space is available for their children – and that they accept scholarship students.

“We want to make sure that finances do not stop anyone from attending,” said principal Jenny Studer.

In addition to accepting students who are eligible for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Gardiner Scholarship, two programs administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, San Jose offers its own financial aid programs. The school accepts students regardless of their religious beliefs. About 20 percent of those currently enrolled aren’t Catholic, Studer said, adding, “Our doors are open to all.”

San Jose’s student-teacher ratio of 17 to 1 makes it attractive to parents seeking a safe environment, Studer said. Classrooms are large enough that children can be seated with more-than-adequate social distancing. Other safety measures include temperature checks for staff and students, water bottle refill stations, limits on restroom occupancy and an isolation room for those who show virus symptoms until their parents can pick them up.

The school employs its own cleaning staff, and plans are in place to sanitize high-touch areas frequently throughout the day. The entire campus will be cleaned at the end of each school day.

Seats also are open at six K-12 schools operated by Children’s Educational Services. Campuses are in Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Zephyrhills and Bradenton.

“We have a fantastic program at all CES schools and want as many children to experience it as possible,” vice president Andy Uprichard said, adding that the school accepts all state scholarships. Like San Jose, the organization has its own financial aid programs for families who need assistance above what their scholarships will cover.

Uprichard said about 30 students from public schools have enrolled over the summer across the six campuses, and more parents are calling every day.

“They’ve heard how organized we are, how prepared we are and how we’re being direct about the situation at hand, and they feel like they can trust us,” he said.

Last spring, the schools averaged 12 to 15 students per class. This fall, with some families choosing the school’s optional online program, there will be more opportunities for social distancing, Uprichard said.

Other safety features he cited include staggered drop-off and dismissal times, extra handwashing and sanitizing stations, extra cleaning, temperature checks, face masks and air purifiers.

In South Florida, where most of the state’s coronavirus cases have been concentrated, parents are checking out Compass Outreach and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale. Founded in 2017, it offers a host of options for learning, including full-time in-person micro-school instruction, a homeschool hybrid and virtual education.

Everything takes place in a large one-room schoolhouse and across a half-acre of lush, green land that serves as an outdoor classroom. That area will be used for math and language arts classes as well as for outdoor activities. Indoors, children will be seated two to a table at opposite ends. Students will wear masks indoors as per the latest orders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Staff will be required to wear masks all the time.

“We’ve been giving tours non-stop,” said Laurel Suarez, president and CEO of the micro-school, which emphasizes entrepreneurship, nature education and a student-centered approach to learning for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. “A lot of those coming from the public school are looking for viable alternatives, even if its three days a week so they can work.”

Like San Jose and the schools managed by Children’s Educational Services, Compass accepts students on state scholarships, as well as other forms of financial aid.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Suarez said, 15 spots were still available.

July 30, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Family Empowerment Scholarship Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice

Setting this newspaper straight about school choice

Ron Matus July 14, 2020

Ron Matus

Hundreds of education choice supporters rallied at the State Capitol earlier this year to show support for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. More than 784,000 scholarships have been provided to lower-income Florida students since 2001.

Editor’s note: On July 5, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published an op-ed that named Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that hosts this blog, and made numerous errors about the scholarship programs Step Up administers. On July 6, Step Up’s director of policy and public affairs submitted a short rebuttal. By July 13, the opinions editor had given no word as to whether the response would be published and had not corrected the errors in the original piece, which has since been published in at least one other newspaper. We thought it appropriate to publish the rebuttal as submitted.

Choice strengthens public education

Over the past 20 years, Florida public schools rose from barrel-bottom to respectability, and are now, according to key academic indicators, better than they’ve ever been. This progress happened as the expansion of education choice in Florida became a bedrock organizing principle.

We can’t say for sure that more choice is why Florida now ranks No. 3 in success on Advanced Placement exams; No. 4 in K-12 achievement, according to Education Week; and No. 1, No. 1, No. 3 and No. 8 on the four core tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, once adjusted for demographics. But those outcomes sure do upend claims that choice has hurt public schools.

That festering falsehood and others aired in a fact-challenged July 5 op-ed. The author relied on tired myths to argue private school choice is draining money from public schools and took specific aim at the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students. She also cast state funding for the newest choice program – the Family Empowerment Scholarship – as unprecedented, even though Florida’s use of direct public dollars for private education goes back at least 40 years.

Some basic math helps. A Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is worth 60 percent of average per-pupil spending in Florida public school. That’s why every independent financial analysis has found the scholarship saves taxpayer money – and none has found otherwise. Corporations contributed about $700 million to the program last year and did not “save a bundle,” as the op-ed claimed. In fact, they didn’t save a penny. They donated to a cause the state long ago deemed worthy – expanding educational opportunities for disadvantaged students – and received dollar-for-dollar tax credits in return.

Florida’s other “vouchers” encompass programs from pre-school to college. Most of them do not include income limits on eligibility. The state spends $400 million a year on VPK. It spends $200 million a year on McKay Scholarships for students with disabilities. It’s spent hundreds of millions on higher education scholarships, including Bright Futures, so students can defray tuition at private schools.

Why are critics only upset by the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and Family Empowerment Scholarship – the only two programs that serve predominantly low-income students of color? There is no good answer.

The author is right that we must strengthen public education. The best available evidence suggests that’s what’s happening, with private school students making progress too. A 2019 Urban Institute study found tax credit scholarship students are up to 20 percent more likely than their public school peers to earn bachelor’s degrees. That’s encouraging.

That’s also what happens when diversity and equity become more central to public education, and when more parents have the power to determine the educational destinies of their children.

July 14, 2020 0 comment

Analysis Courts Education Choice Education Equity Education Legislation Featured Parental Choice Private School Scholarships Private Schools Religious Education School Choice

Court lays to rest age-old debate with Espinoza decision

Patrick R. Gibbons July 1, 2020

Patrick R. Gibbons

After more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court finally has determined that Blaine amendments, which were created in the late 19^th century under a wave of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bias, violate the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise clause.

“A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious,” ruled the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision this week.

Montana’s school choice program became the first tax credit scholarship to be struck down by a state supreme court, but not the first private school choice program to be struck down because of a “Blaine Amendment.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling reverses the Montana Supreme Court, arguing the state’s “No Aid” provision violates the rights of parents, students and religious schools under the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The ruling is in step with the Trinity Lutheran (2017) decision which argued denying grants for playground resurfacing simply because the institution was religious was unconstitutional.

Though the Court ruled that the Blaine Amendment violates the Free Exercise clause, it declined to rule whether it also violated the Establishment Clause or Equal Protections Clause.

Not surprisingly, school choice opponents are up in arms about the decision.

“… the court has made things even worse opening the door for further attacks on state decisions not to fund religious schools,” said National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García in an NEA blog post.

But the court’s decision does nothing of the sort. The decision to create and fund education scholarships still falls to the people.

Other school choice opponents are arguing the decision erodes separation of church and state.

Ron Meyer, lawyer for the Florida Education Association, went so far as to state in an interview with the Miami Herald, “It’s another chipping away of the free exercise of religion.”

But the decision falls in line with a long-standing recognition of religious neutrality required of governments. Though many of these cases deal with the Establishment Clause rather than the Free Exercise Clause, they demonstrate this long-standing precedent on religious neutrality.

The first case to apply the Free Exercise clause to a state matter was Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), which reversed a criminal conviction of three Jehovah’s Witnesses for proselytizing door-to-door without a state license. In a unanimous decision the court ruled:

“Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus, the Amendment embraces two concepts, freedom to believe and freedom to act.”

In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the court defined the Establishment Clause beyond simply establishing a national church by declaring the clause prohibited the aid of one religion or even all religions. However, the court still upheld public bus fare reimbursements to parents sending their children to Catholic schools because the reimbursement was available to all. Regarding New Jersey’s publicly funded programs, the court ruled:

“Consequently, it cannot exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Non-believers, Presbyterians, or the members of any other faith, because of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation.”

In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court held Ohio’s voucher program “does not offend the Establishment Clause” because the program was neutral with respect to religion.

As with Zelman, several other national cases support tax exemptions and other public benefits for seemingly religious activities, but only so long as the programs pass the “Lemon Test.”

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) established the “Lemon Test,” a three-part test to determine if a program violates the Establishment Clause. The test requires the program to have a secular purpose, to not advance or inhibit any particular religion, and to not excessively tangle government with religion. In Lemon, the court allowed state subsidies of textbooks, educational materials and even teacher salaries at private schools in Pennsylvania.

Mueller v. Allen (1983) upheld a Minnesota tax law that allowed individuals to deduct parochial school expenses. The Supreme Court ruled the program was neutral with respect to religion since the tax deduction was available to all, and that helping to fund education (even through tax deductions) was a secular purpose.

Agostini v. Felton (1997) allowed public funds to pay the salaries of public school teachers educating economically disadvantaged children, including private religious schools. This landmark ruling reversed Aguilar v. Felton (1985), which held that paying public school teachers to teach parochial school students was “excessive entanglement” with religion. Agostini reversed that decision and determined the program was neutral with respect to religion and that the purpose of educating disadvantaged children was a secular one.

Deference to religious neutrality flows down to the state courts as well.

Florida cases such as Koerner v. Borck (1958) argued that, “State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions, than it is to favor them.”

Meanwhile, in Johnson v. Presbyterian Homes of Synod of Florida, Inc. (1970), the Florida Supreme Court ruled on a tax exemption:

“A state cannot pass a law to aid one religion or all religions, but state action to promote the general welfare of society, apart from any religious considerations, is valid, even though religious interests may be indirectly benefited.”

Espinoza isn’t deviating from the U.S.’s “separation of church and state,” as critics have misunderstood. The ruling follows a long history of allowing religious institutions and persons to benefit from public programs, in this instance extending that right to K-12 education where powerful opponents attempted to carve out an exemption.

A fight over how much religion can be taught in a private school may be around the corner. But that is a fight for another day.

July 1, 2020 1 comment

Courts Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Legislation Featured News Parent Empowerment Parental Choice Private Schools Religious Education

Supreme Court in Espinoza ruling opens door to state funding for religious schools

Lisa Buie June 30, 2020

Lisa Buie

Kendra Espinoza of Kalispell, Montana, lead plaintiff in the case, with her daughters Naomi and Sarah outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in January.

In a landmark decision today on school choice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Montana Department of Revenue’s shutdown of a tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students is unconstitutional, potentially opening the door for states to enact such programs for students to attend private faith-based schools.

The court said in its 5-4 decision on Espinoza vs. the Montana Department of Revenue, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that the Montana Department of Revenue cannot disqualify religious schools simply because of what they are.

“A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious,” the opinion said.

The ruling also stated:

“Drawing on ‘enduring American tradition,’ we have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children … Many parents exercise that right by sending their children to religious schools, a choice protected by the Constitution.”

Roberts was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer.

“The Supreme Court delivered a major victory to parents who want to choose the best school for their children, including religious schools,” said Institute for Justice senior attorney Erica Smith, who was co-counsel on the case. “This is a landmark case in education that will allow states across the country to enact educational choice programs that give parents maximum educational options.”

Organizations that support education choice praised the decision.

“It’s a good news day for those who love the freedoms we enjoy in this country and seek to advance and preserve those freedoms,” said Leslie Hiner, leader of the Legal Defense & Education Center for the nonprofit advocacy group EdChoice. “Today the Supreme Court has re-affirmed its role as the guardians of our Constitution. The Montana Supreme Court has disregarded the U.S. Constitution, and in particular the First Amendment’s clause protecting our right to the Free Exercise of whatever faith we choose as individuals, when it struck down a modest school choice program that allowed parents to choose any school, religiously-affiliated or not, for their children’s education.”

The case started in 2015, when the Montana Legislature enacted a program that provided a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for taxpayers who donated to a Student Scholarship Organization. That meant a Montana resident could donate to a scholar organization, and in turn, would receive a tax credit for the donation.

The Student Scholarship Organization used the donated money to provide scholarships to students to attend private schools, including private schools affiliated with a religion.

Shortly after the program was enacted, the Montana Department of Revenue promulgated an administrative rule (“Rule 1”) prohibiting scholarship recipients from using their scholarships at religious schools, citing a provision of the state constitution that prohibits “direct or indirect” public funding of religiously affiliated educational programs.

Kendra Espinoza and the two other mothers filed a lawsuit in state court challenging the rule. The trial court determined that the scholarship program was constitutional without the rule and granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. On appeal, the Department of Revenue argued that the program is unconstitutional without Rule 1. The Montana Supreme Court agreed with the Department and reversed the lower court.

At issue in the case are Blaine Amendments, also called “No Aid” clauses, which are provisions in 38 state constitutions, including Florida’s, that bar public aid to religious organizations. They get their name from James G. Blaine, a congressional representative and later senator and presidential nominee from Maine who unsuccessfully attempted to amend the U.S. constitution in 1875 to include “anti-aid” language onto the end of the first amendment. Where he failed at the federal level, many states inserted Blaine Amendments into their constitutions. As a result, Blaine Amendments frequently act as state-level barriers against school choice.

“I am thrilled that the courts ruled in favor of the Constitution and maintained a parent’s right to choose where their children go to school,” Espinoza said in a news release issued by the Institute for Justice. “For our family, this means we can continue to receive assistance that is a lifeline to our ability to stay at Stillwater. For so many other families across America, this will potentially mean changing lives and positively altering the future of thousands of children nationwide. What a wonderful victory.”

The win and the promise of continued scholarships is a significant boost to Espinoza, who has had to work multiple jobs, including cleaning houses and doing janitorial work, to afford her daughters’ tuition payments at a private Christian school in Kalispell. Kendra transferred her two daughters to Stillwater Christian School after they struggled in their public school. Montana’s scholarship program has helped Kendra and families across the state keep their children in the school that works best for them.

“It’s been a century-and-a-half since the bigoted Blaine movement took root in state constitutions throughout the country,” IJ Senior Attorney Richard Komer, who argued the case before the Court said in the news release. “Today’s decision shows that it is never too late to correct an injustice, even one with as long and ignoble a pedigree as this one.”

Today’s decision will affect most of the 14 states that have strictly interpreted their state constitution Blaine Amendments to bar scholarships to children at religious schools. For decades, the creation and expansion of school choice programs have been inhibited by legislative concerns that they might conflict with state constitutions. Those concerns are now removed with today’s decision in Espinoza.

June 30, 2020 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured News Private School Scholarships School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships

Wisconsin advocacy group sues on behalf of family seeking school choice scholarship

Patrick R. Gibbons May 22, 2020

Patrick R. Gibbons

Katrina Olguin, pictured with her husband and sons, is fighting the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to secure private school scholarships.

When Katrina Olguin applied for private school scholarships for her sons, she probably never imagined she would be disqualified for being over the income threshold – by less than $50.

Unfortunately for Olguin, of West Allis, Wisconsin, her state’s Department of Public Instruction rules prohibit parents from reapplying in the same year, even if they amend their application.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty believes that rule is illegal and has filed suit on behalf of Olguin and her sons.

According to the institute, Olquin reapplied for the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program after making legal contributions to her IRA so her family was again income eligible. The state denied the application, citing the rule prohibiting same-year reapplication.

Wisconsin’s scholarship program provides scholarships to low-income and working-class students. Household income must be at or below 220 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $66,000 for a family of five.

“We were just $47 over and I did everything to adjust it legally,” Olguin wrote in a blog post that was published on Medium. “And then they were just like, no, sorry.”

According to the article, Olguin wants three of her sons to attend Heritage Christian Schools, a high-performing school her two older sons attend and where she is a teacher. The school attempted to appeal on Olguin’s behalf, but the Department of Public Instruction still would not consider the application.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty claims the rule is illegal because the Department of Public Instruction was “required to proceed through a rulemaking process outlined in state law,” including allowing public review and comment, but failed to do so.

“DPI’s job is to facilitate education in Wisconsin,” wrote Lucas Vebber, a lawyer for the institute. “But too often DPI finds ways to work against families and schools in the parental choice program.”

May 22, 2020 1 comment

Analysis Education Choice Family Empowerment Scholarship Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Gardiner Scholarship McKay Scholarship Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice

The proof is in the numbers: participation in education choice is soaring

Patrick R. Gibbons April 3, 2020

Patrick R. Gibbons

While Covid-19 likely will be responsible for the single largest increase in virtual education in Florida’s history, enrollment growth over time in another program that offers education choice, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, is nevertheless impressive. From academic year 2015-16 to 2016-17, the program grew by 20,000 students.

Meanwhile, the Family Empowerment Scholarship, in its first year, ramped up to 18,000 students in a matter of months. The previous first-year enrollment record holder, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, launched in 2002 with 15,585 students.

By comparison, the McKay Scholarship program for students with disabilities began in 2000 with 970 students. The Opportunity Scholarship program, created in 1999 and offered to students attending low-performing public schools, served just 57 students in its first year. (The Florida Supreme Court in 2006 declared that program unconstitutional after an epic legal battle.)

Enrollment in the Gardiner Scholarship program, created in 2014 for students with unique abilities, has shown steady, if less rapid growth, although that’s likely to change. The Florida Legislature appropriated an additional $23 million in funding for the program in 2019, pushing Gardiner funding to $147.9 million and allowing it to serve at least 2,000 more students. This year, the Legislature approved an additional $42 million increase for the program, which will make it available to still more families.

(Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, Family Empowerment Scholarship and Gardiner Scholarship programs.)

Data indicate that while the percentage of students diagnosed with autism participating in the program has grown, the number of students with other diagnoses has declined as a percentage of the total population amid an expansion in the list of eligibilities.

The percentage of minority students participating in the Florida Tax Credit program has remained remarkably stable. In 2010, non-white students made up 75 percent of the program and today comprise 73 percent. While the percentage of black students dropped from 36 percent to 30 percent, the number of Hispanic students increased from 27 percent to 38 percent. The percentage of white students participating increased from 25 percent to 27 percent.

The Florida Tax Credit program’s income eligibility requirements also have changed over time. Today, students can remain in the program if their household income does not exceed 260 percent of poverty. That threshold has increased from 185 percent, the eligibility requirement for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program.

The average student lives in a household earning $27,298 a year, just 13 percent above the poverty level.

April 3, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Education Politics Education Savings Accounts Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship McKay Scholarship Parent Empowerment Private School Scholarships School Choice Special Needs Education

Proposed funding cap in Arizona would deprive thousands

Matthew Ladner March 9, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Katie Swingle, mother of a child with autism, spoke before the Florida Senate Education Appropriations Committee in March 2015, imploring lawmakers to expand education choice options for children with special needs.

If you need to make a choice between reading this post or watching the video featuring the mom pictured above, please watch the video. Katie Swingle explains why families with children with special needs require and deserve access to education choice. Her story demonstrates why depriving them of choice is a terrible thing.

Sadly, there is an effort underway in Arizona to do exactly that.

Arizona’s Save Our Schools group has proposed a statewide ballot initiative that would create an overall participation cap on Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Program of 1 percent of the total student enrollment of the public school system. Once that cap is reached, students other than those with disabilities, including Native American children, those who have been in the foster care system, are zoned for D- or F-rated public schools, orphans and dependents of active duty military service members among others, would be purged from participating.

Upon completion of this purge, the program would lack the ability to serve additional special needs students. Last week, I noted that 1.7 percent of the total public school enrollment in Florida makes use of private choice programs for children with disabilities. I should further have noted that Florida has a waitlist of students with disabilities for the ESA program.

Historical program data allows us to assess the length of time it would take for the proposed cap to deny access to disadvantaged students if something like it were to be applied in Florida. As a thought experiment, imagine Florida’s multiple-choice programs debuting as a state-funded program in the same year that the McKay Scholarship program debuted.

This next part will require you to suspend your disbelief. Imagine a group of advantaged urban Floridians who exercise choice in their own families managing, from the outset of choice, to implement a cap in Florida for disadvantaged students. Floridians, of course, would find it nearly impossible to live with such a level of moral hypocrisy.

In Florida’s actual experience, lawmakers created a voucher program for students with disabilities and one for children in failing schools, followed by a tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students. Our thought experiment involves envisioning Florida following closer to the Arizona ESA experience: a single program starting with students with disabilities. A few years into the program, the Florida lawmakers of our thought experiment add low-income students into the eligibility pool for the state-funded program. Okay. So, how long would it have taken for the SOS cap to have purged disadvantaged students in Florida?

Let’s look first at the McKay Scholarship program for students with disabilities.

If the McKay Scholarship program had been the only choice program created, it would have exceeded the 1 percent cap by itself in 2013. After 2013, additional special needs children would have been denied access. Of course, it wasn’t the only program; Florida lawmakers also made low-income students eligible to participate in choice.

The combination of McKay and the tax credit program would have exceeded the SOS cap around 2004. “Let them eat cake,” the cap supporters would tell the tens of thousands of low-income families piling onto waitlists.

This isn’t the end of the story, however. Florida also created a special needs ESA program in 2015. This is the program used by the all-too-real mom in the video.

Every single one of these families, including the Swingle family, would have been denied choice under an SOS cap. Arizona’s ESA program is only a few years of growth away from reaching the proposed cap.

Supporters claim the cap will not impact current beneficiaries, but it clearly will. Moreover, there are thousands of Arizona students with disabilities today, and many more yet unborn, who would be denied access through the proposed cap.

March 9, 2020 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Legislation Family Empowerment Scholarship Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice Vouchers

House amends K-12 scholarship expansion bill to track Senate version

Lisa Buie March 6, 2020

Lisa Buie

The Florida House approved changes to a bill that would bolster and align two state scholarship programs that provide education choice to economically disadvantaged students.

The changes, approved on a voice vote, line up HB 7067 to nearly match a Senate version, SB 1220, that won approval in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday and now awaits action on the Senate floor. The House version awaits a final reading and floor vote before being sent to the Senate.

The House and Senate bills include provisions aimed at aligning policies between the new Family Empowerment Scholarship, adopted last year and serving 18,000 students, and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001 and serving 108,000 students. Both scholarship programs serve students from lower-income and working-class families. The primary difference is that the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is funded by corporations that receive a 100 percent tax credit, and the Family Empowerment Scholarship is funded directly from the state education budget.

Both bills would increase the allowed enrollment growth in the Family Empowerment Scholarship. Under current law, the program can grow by up to 0.25 of total public school enrollment each year, which is roughly 7,000 students. SB 1220 and HB 7067 both increase that growth to 1 percent, or roughly 28,000.

Both bills now give clear priority to renewal students in both programs and provide for a gradual increase in household income eligibility over time. That provision allows the eligible income level in the Family Empowerment Scholarship, currently 300 percent of federal poverty, to increase by 25 percentage points in the next year if more than 5 percent of the available scholarships remain unawarded.

The income limit for Tax Credit Scholarships would remain at 260 percent of poverty.

Other parts of the bill approved today included:

Allowing Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students to continue receiving the scholarship until they graduate from high school or turn 21, aligning it with the Family Empowerment Scholarship provision. Now, Florida Tax Credit students must reapply each year.
Allowing Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students whose scholarships were not renewed due to a lack of funding to transfer to the Family Empowerment Scholarship.
Allowing students in the Family Empowerment Scholarship program to take up to two state-supported virtual courses each year without cost. That provision already applies to Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students.

March 6, 2020 0 comment