A STORM LOOMS
Private schools in the area face challenges with instruction and funding during virus pandemic
With campuses shuttered, Central Florida’s Catholic schools aim to be the “anchor in the storm” for their students, providing academic and faith-based lessons online and morning prayers through video-call class meetings. The shift to online learning, assisted by more than 1,000 loaned-out laptops, hasn’t been anxiety-free, but it has gone relatively smoothly, said Henry Fortier, superintendent of the Diocese of Orlando’s 43 schools.
Still, the Catholic schools worry about their future. In recent weeks, Fortier said, more and more parents have told administrators they’ve been furloughed or laid off as Florida’s
economy has sunk in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. That will make paying private-school tuition tougher.
“I think all private schools in general are going to be faced with serious challenges,” he said.
The region’s Catholic schools will be encouraging parents who have lost jobs or income to apply for state scholarships, which help pay private-school tuition for low-income families.
Florida’s battered economy, however, means the state budget faces deep cuts and leaves some wondering how robust the scholarship programs, often called school vouchers, will be for the next school year.
About 2,000 private schools accept state scholarships, and more than 167,000 students this year use those vouchers to pay for tuition, at a cost of more than $1 billion.
School-choice advocates say if families don’t receive scholarship money or do but still cannot afford the additional tuition and fees some private schools charge, they likely will enroll their children in public schools. And public schools may struggle to absorb so many new students given the state’s budget crisis will impact their 2020-21 spending plans, too.
Some also acknowledge a more immediate worry: Small private schools that rely heavily on state scholarships may have lacked resources to effectively pivot to “distance learning,” raising questions about the quality of education their students have received since campuses closed more than a month ago. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said all schools, public and private, will remain shut through the end of the academic year.
“We have heard stories around these schools not necessarily having the devices and the WIFI available for them, and we’re not sure they’re having the same success we’re having,” said Jon Hage, CEO of Charter Schools USA, which manages 66 charter schools across Florida. “This is an area that we’re going to need to focus on.”
Hage is a member of the governor’s “Re-open Florida” task force and spoke at its education working group meeting late last month. Though he represents charter schools, which are public schools run by private groups, his comments were based on conversations with others in the “school choice community,” including those who work with the private scholarship schools, a spokeswoman said.
Some of the private scholarship schools, like the Catholic schools, operate on well-established campuses with a paying clientele in addition to scholarship students, but others depend completely on state vouchers and operate out of rented storefronts or small church halls.
Though some of the scholarships pay for students with disabilities to attend private schools, the bulk go to children from low-income families, who may not have computers and internet access in their homes.
“The hard part was I don’t own a laptop,” said Sharon Houser, a Pasco County mother who uses the income-based state scholarship to send her two children to a private school in New Port Richey.
When First Christian Academy announced its campus was closing, Houser posted on an online neighborhood website asking if anyone had a used, and inexpensive, one for sale. She also posted on the Facebook page for Step Up
For Students — the agency that administers the bulk of Florida’s scholarships — asking if help was available to scholarship families who needed but couldn’t afford computers.
“It was just having the technology for them to be able to continue with their school and not get too far behind,” she said.
Fortunately, when her children’s school learned of her plight, Houser said, it loaned her one laptop for them to share. Then neighbors gave her one they weren’t using. Now, she added, her family is able to “do the home school thing.”
In Central Florida, some private schools have done the same. At the small Deeper Root Academy in Gotha, which had about 50 scholarship students last year, the school’s principal said she called every parent and then loaned out seven computers.
“We are accommodating our families based on their needs and making the best learning experience we can given this unusual and difficult global event,” wrote Angela Kennedy, the school’s director, in an email.
But there is no way to gauge statewide how scholarship schools are faring with campuses closed. Neither
Step Up nor the Florida Department of Education had information on how many devices scholarship schools had or their ability to ramp up for distance learning.
In coming months, private schools, especially those that take state scholarships, could face “unprecedented crises,” as more parents are unable to pay tuition, said Mimi Jankovitz, executive director of Teach FL, a group that advocates for state scholarships for Jewish day schools.
Jankovitz, who also spoke at the state task force meeting, predicted an increased demand for Florida’s income-based scholarships. But she also worried that the Tax Credit Scholarship program, the state’s largest voucher program and one targeted to low-income families, could see its funding decline in the economic downturn, making fewer scholarships available.
Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran responded that donations to the scholarship program — made by corporations in exchange for tax write offs — haven’t fallen “as of yet” but said the state is monitoring. Step Up, in an email, said it is too early to predict the demand for scholarships.
Jankovitz, however, said if families cannot get scholarships there could be a flood of new students entering public schools.
“I’m not sure at all that if thousands of kids show up at various public schools that the school have the capacity or staff to handle all these new students,” she added.
Billy Townsend, a Polk County School Board member, said he thinks some private schools dependent on state scholarships “will just implode” and likely had little to offer their students once campuses closed. “They’re already out of school,” he said.
But he also said public schools could face devastating budget cuts — Broward County’s superintendent predicted recently they could hit 25 percent — so new students from private schools would hardly the biggest problem for a system that educates about 2.8 million children.
“It assumes there will be a public school system to come back to. I’m not at all clear that there will be one,” Townsend said. “The kind of cuts they’re talking about are eviscerating.”