Voucher supporters: Keep funding coming
Group denounces effort to discourage companies from giving to schools with anti-gay policies
TALLAHASSEE — Supporters of Florida’s largest school voucher program Tuesday denounced efforts by two Orlando lawmakers to pressure companies to stop contributions because some participating private schools have anti-gay policies.
The group of about 100 people criticized an “attack” on school vouchers and blamed Democratic lawmakers Anna Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith for pushing companies to halt donations to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program. The lawmakers have urged that action until the state adopts safeguards for gay and transgender students who attend private schools using those scholarships.
The Orlando Sentinel published an investigation on Jan. 23 that detailed how more than 150 private schools that take Florida scholarships, often called vouchers, have anti-gay policies. About half of those say they would deny admission to or discipline LGBTQ students; the others declare homosexuality a biblical
sin but don’t spell out what that means for students.
Those who gathered in the Capitol, including students holding “Don’t Take My Scholarship” signs, said the lawmakers would end up harming black and Hispanic children living in poverty — the majority of scholarship recipients — by forcing them out of the private schools where they were thriving.
“The scholarship gives [parents] power and a sense of hope. Representatives Anna Eskamani and Carlos Smith and their media allies apparently want to take away this power and crush this hope by convincing corporations to take scholarships away from our children,” said Pastor Robert Ward, chairman of the Florida African American Ministers Alliance.
Ward is the founder of the Mt. Moriah Christian Fundamental Academy in St. Petersburg, and said all 56 of his students use a state scholarship to pay tuition.
Statewide, more than 104,000 students use a tax credit scholarship to attend private school.
Step Up For Students, the influential schoolchoice advocacy group that administers the bulk of the program, said in a recent email to parents that it lost $6 million in donations, which amounted to at least 800 scholarships, after the Orlando Sentinel investigation.
Step Up said in the email that it plans protests outside Eskamani and Smith’s Orlando offices on Thursday and is urging parents and educators to attend. “Food will be provided!” the email said. “You do not need to bring anything, shirts and signs will also be provided.”
The agency can keep up to 3% of the money it collects for administration. It earned more than $18.4 million from the tax credit program in the last fiscal year, according to its June 2019 financial report.
Nearly 2,000 private schools across Florida take the state’s scholarships, and parents choose where they seek admission, though the schools do not have to accept youngsters. The majority of participating schools are religious, and most of those are Christian.
The tax credit scholarship — the largest of Florida’s five school voucher programs — sent more than $105 million to campuses with antiLGBTQ policies last year, the Sentinel found. Those schools educated more than 20,800 students last year, records from Step Up and the Florida Department of Education show.
That program is funded by companies that divert money they owe in state taxes to a scholarship fund instead.
After the stories published, five companies, among them Orlandobased Wyndham Destinations, said they would no longer donate unless safeguards to prevent discrimination against gay and transgender students were put in place. Four others, informed of the paper’s findings last year, also said they would halt their contributions.
Another four companies have said they were rethinking whether to continue their support.
Eskamani and Smith have been using Twitter to urge the companies, some of which publicly declare themselves LGBTQ friendly and took part in Orlando’s gay pride parade, to rethink their policies.
Smith, who did not attend Tuesday’s press conference, said later that private schools that take vouchers should be open to all students. He’s working with his colleagues in the Legislature and with the Florida Department of Education, he said, to stop state money from going to schools that discriminate.
“Bringing this conversation to light is a good thing because now there is a level of awareness from the public about what is happening at some of these private schools participating in the program,” Smith said. “I think it’s important to note that not one student has lost a scholarship as a result of this public conversation.”
He and Eskamani support legislation, which Republican leaders won’t allow to be heard, that would bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in private schools that take scholarships, adding that language to a law that already prevents discrimination based on “race, color or national origin” at participating private schools.
“As a brown girl myself I have no intention of making life harder for kids of any color — we just want to make sure LGBTQ kids are safe & I feel confident that we’ll find a solution, too,” tweeted Eskamani, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, after the press conference.
Pastor Luis Vega, executive director of The Way Christian Academy in Tampa, said the lawmakers’ efforts could unfairly hurt schools like his.
“We do not discriminate,” he said. “Yet children on scholarship attending our school are being threatened by an effort to defund the program. I don’t know why these people are going after students like my students.”
Step Up said that it does not discriminate in awarding scholarships and said some scholarships have gone to gay and transgender youngsters, who were bullied in their public schools.
Elijah Robinson, a senior at Foundation Academy in Jacksonville, said he was bullied because of his sexual identity at his school. It got so bad, he tried to kill himself, he said, but a scholarship to the private academy, which is welcoming to LGBTQ students, made all the difference.
“I know what is being debated right now is really complicated,” he said. “My hope is that everybody takes the time to think carefully through this. Please don’t do anything that could result in fewer scholarships. Because if that happens students like me will get hurt, not helped.”
Elijah’s story, Smith said, proves “all private schools are capable of treating LGBTQ students with dignity and respect.”
“The bullying and abuse that LGBTQ students face — it’s a terrible but common reality,” he said.