South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Anti-LGBTQ Florida schools receive vouchers
In the shadow of a nearly 200-foot cross, Central Florida Christian Academy enrolls students who live by the Bible’s commands and abstain from “sexual immorality” — meaning gay children aren’t welcome on the state-supported campus in west Orange County.
Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater denies admission to students if they, or someone in their home, are practicing a “homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity” or “promoting such practices.”
Wade Christian School in Melbourne keeps an “expulsion list,” with a “homosexual act” among the offenses, alongside bringing weapons to campus, distributing drugs and striking a staff member.
In Florida last year, 156 private Christian schools with these types of anti-gay views educated more than 20,800 students with tuition paid for by state scholarships, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.
Florida’s scholarship programs, often referred to as school vouchers, sent more than $129 million to these religious institutions. That means at least 14 percent of Florida’s nearly 147,000 scholarship students last year attended private schools where homosexuality was condemned or, at a minimum, unwelcome.
The Sentinel found 83 schools that refuse to admit LGBTQ students or could
expel them if their sexual orientation or gender identity were discovered. Some also refuse to educate students whose parents are gay or to hire staff who are gay.
Another 73 schools call being gay or transgender a biblical sin but do not explain how those views play out in admissions or student discipline decisions.
Critics say Florida shouldn’t allow this discrimination at private schools that take its vouchers.
“All students should be welcome at a K-12 school, especially those schools that receive public money,” said Suzanne Eckes, a professor in educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University who has studied school voucher programs. “I think the big question is, ‘Hey citizens of the state of Florida ... Do you want your taxpayer money used in this way?”
The private schools defend their views about sexual orientation and gender identity, saying they are found in the Bible, the foundation of their faith. School administrators have a right to infuse those beliefs into school lessons and policies, they say, and parents using scholarships have a right to choose those religious schools for their children.
“Students don’t need to go to that school if they feel that is going to be a problem for their families and their lifestyles,” said Howard Burke, executive director of the Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools.
Burke’s association counts as members nearly 40 schools that take Florida vouchers and espouse antigay policies. “Don’t try to conform our programs into something they’re not established to provide,” he said.
The debate touches on civil rights, religious freedom, past discrimination cases and the future of Florida’s school choice programs. It comes as the U.S. Supreme Court this week hears arguments in a Montana case about whether state scholarships can go to religious schools. The outcome could hinder or fuel the expansion of Florida’s scholarship programs.
Florida scholarship laws prohibit private schools that accept the tuition vouchers — earmarked for students from low-income families and for those with disabilities — from discriminating against students based on “race, color or national origin.”
But they do not protect LGBTQ youngsters, and neither federal nor state laws require such safeguards.
Several Democratic lawmakers this year are pushing to change that, arguing private schools that accept state money shouldn’t be able to discriminate against some of the state’s students. But their proposals look unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature, which convened last week.
The two bills were prompted in part by the Sentinel’s earlier reporting about several Central Florida schools that take state scholarships yet refuse to educate gay students.
“At the very least, it shouldn’t be something the state of Florida consents to and subsidizes,” said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, sponsor of the proposal in the Florida House.
About eight years ago, Nicole Haagenson’s wife, Cari, received Florida scholarships for her two oldest children and tried to enroll them in Master’s Academy of Vero Beach school, which they’d previously attended when Cari was married to a man. The school refused to accept the girls, she said, when they learned their mother was in a relationship with another woman.
“I don’t want to infringe on someone else’s religious belief,” Haagenson said. “But you should not be accepting public funding if you’re going to discriminate.”
Haagenson, a U.S. Air Force veteran and an information technology director at a Vero Beach company, ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Florida House last year. She and her wife, who now parent a blended family with five children, want Florida’s voucher rules to change.
“Just because I’m gay
doesn’t mean my kids can’t go to a great school,” she added.
Master’s Academy, which shares a campus with a church, describes “homosexual behavior” as “sinful and offensive to God” and explains neither gay students nor youngsters from homes that don’t uphold a “biblical lifestyle” can enroll.
“A fundamental tenant of our Democracy is the right to hold and express varying beliefs and viewpoints, which includes beliefs and viewpoints informed by one’s religious convictions,” wrote Wayne Smith, the head of the Vero Beach school, in an email to the Sentinel.
The state shouldn’t try to change those, he said.
“Faith-based admission requirements and codes of conduct ensure that our schools can create the learning environment where religious values are passed along to the next generation,” Smith added.
The Sentinel reviewed websites of more than 1,000 schools — most of the religious schools that take Florida scholarships — to determine their policies related to LBGTQ students. It examined student handbooks, application forms, statements of faith and other documents as well as websites of affiliated churches and associations.
The amount of money sent to each private school and the number of scholarship students enrolled were provided by the Florida Department of Education and Step Up For Students, the scholarship funding organization that administers the bulk of Florida’s vouchers.
Most of the religious schools taking Florida scholarships are Christian, though the Sentinel looked at the Islamic and Jewish schools that take part in the state’s voucher programs, too.
All of the schools the Sentinel found with anti-gay policies were Christian, with the largest group — about 45 percent — Baptist, not surprising given that the Southern Baptist Convention says Christians must “oppose” homosexuality.
Nearly 40 percent of the schools were non-denominational and a smattering were affiliated with Assemblies of God, Catholic, Lutheran, Nazarene, Pentecostal and Presbyterian Church in America denominations, among others.
There could be more campuses with discriminatory policies, as some private schools that take the scholarships do not publicly post their rules, and a small number don’t have websites.
The schools with these anti-gay rules are found across Central Florida, in suburban DeLand (Stetson Baptist Christian School), near downtown Orlando (Victory Christian Academy) and in historic Mount Dora (Mount Dora Christian Academy). They are in Florida’s rural communities from Okeechobee to the Panhandle and its cities from Miami to St. Petersburg to Tallahassee.
The schools see the proposed legislation as an unconstitutional attack on their religious rights, and many likely wouldn’t change their policies, even if the scholarship law gets amended.
“I would say most schools would stop taking the scholarships. They are operating within their philosophy and their beliefs,” said Wesley Scott, executive director of the National Alliance of Christian Schools.
His group includes dozens of Florida schools, among them Central Florida Christian, whose cross is visible from State Road 408 in west Orange.
The lawmakers seeking new anti-discrimination rules are “an activist group of folks that are trying to push an immoral agenda on all of society,” added Burke of the Florida association.
An administrator with Westwood Christian School in Miami referred the Sentinel to Burke when asked about the school’s requirement that gay students seek church counseling or face expulsion if they refuse or, in the school’s view, it doesn’t work.
The Democrats’ proposed legislation likely won’t go anywhere.
The Republican-controlled Florida House last year voted down a measure similar to Eskamani’s bill, and the GOP remains in control of the state government. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has visited at least two private schools with antigay views since taking office a year ago. In February, he announced his support for Florida’s newest voucher program on the stage of one in Orlando.
Rep. Anthony Sabatini, RHowey-in-the-Hills, speaking at a legislative town hall in August, said he wouldn’t support Eskamani’s bill because it addressed “pretend problems” as there is “no evidence” students have been discriminated against at private schools that take state vouchers.
Eskamani said other GOP colleagues have voiced similar opinions and House leaders have told her the bill will not be heard this session.
However, Senate President Bill Galvano, a Republican from Bradenton, told the Sentinel he supports some type of “fix” to the scholarship law to protect LGBTQ students, though he has nothing specific to share yet.
“Moving forward it is our responsibility to find a balance that preserves the religious freedoms we all cherish, while taking a meaningful stance against policies that would allow any child to be the victim of discrimination, bullying, or harassment,” Galvano said in a statement.
Galvano said he is consulting with Step Up For Students, an influential force in Florida’s 20-year-old school voucher movement, on the issue.
In an email, Patrick Gibbons, a Step Up spokesman, said the agency does not support the proposed legislation, worried it would lead to lawsuits and “missteps,” that “could result in fewer scholarships for vulnerable students, including LGBTQ students.”
The scholarships are awarded without regard to LBGTQ status, and he noted that some gay and transgender students have used them to escape bullying in public schools.
Step Up wants the Legislature
to “aggressively pursue other ways to ensure all schools provide safe learning environments for all their students,” Gibbons wrote, but he declined to elaborate.
The agency also has said that the number of scholarship schools with anti-gay policies is small and that it knows of no scholarship students who had been turned away from a private school because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
But a post from its blog, redefinED, in December 2018 noted a mother’s struggle to find a private school in Volusia County that would accommodate her transgender son.
The teenage boy, called Kiwie, had used a scholarship to attend a Christian school in Jacksonville that welcomed LGBTQ students. But then he moved. His mother “is searching for another private school,” concluded the post by Ron Matus, director of policy and public affairs for Step Up. “She knows finding one that is LGBTQ welcoming, and willing to give Kiwie a chance, is a challenge.”
A gay teacher fired in October because of her sexual orientation from her job at a Christian school in Brevard County also highlights the need for a new law, Eskamani said.
“If this was one school, it’s too much,” she added.
Florida created its first voucher program in 1999 and now has five, serving about 167,000 students this year at about 2,000 private schools.
The scholarships aim to provide options for parents unhappy with their assigned public school but unable to afford private school on their own. Combined, they represent the biggest school choice program in the nation.
Florida’s largest voucher program, the Tax Credit Scholarship, is paid for by corporations that get dollarfor-dollar write-offs on their tax bills when they send money they owe the state to a scholarship fund instead. Most of the other scholarship programs — Gardiner, Family Empowerment and McKay — are paid directly from Florida’s budget.
Some of the private schools depend on the vouchers to cover tuition for nearly all their students.
At Worshipers’ House of Prayer Academy in Miami, for example, at least 112 of 130 students got a scholarship last year. The school’s website says it has “zero tolerance” for “homosexual activity” because God calls it “an abomination.”
As the Sentinel reported in its 2017 “Schools Without Rules” series, the private schools that take Florida scholarships operate largely free of state oversight, setting their own standards for teacher credentials, facilities and curriculum, which can fall short of the requirements the state imposes on its public schools.
The schools are also able to set their own admission standards, which could include rules about sexual orientation and gender identity
as well as demands for church attendance and certain academic benchmarks, such as satisfactory test scores and good grades.
The Sentinel also found several religious schools with policies that promised no discrimination based on sexual orientation, among them Father Lopez Catholic High School in Daytona Beach, which had about 160 voucher students last year and received more than $1 million in state scholarships.
The school is part of the Diocese of Orlando, which said the 43 Catholic schools under its auspices all follow the same policy.
But the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, the church’s lobbying arm in Tallahassee, opposes the Democratic bills that would ban discrimination against gay students at private schools that take the scholarships, according to its website. Florida’s 244 Catholic schools are major players in Florida’s scholarship programs, educating more than 25,000 voucher students this school year.
The Sentinel found many Catholic schools, including most of those in the Orlando diocese, offered no public guidance on their attitude toward gay or transgender students. One Collier County school, however, the Donahue Academy, posted its anti-gay policies in its handbook.
The academy says that the Catholic Church “teaches that same-sex attraction is inherently disordered,” and that those “experiencing this disordered inclination many not advocate for it or express it” or act “upon those inclinations romantically or sexually.”
The academy enrolled about 115 scholarship students last year out of a total enrollment of 270, receiving more than $690,000 in scholarships. It also has a policy against transgender students, saying it “will interact with students according to their biological sex … at birth.”
Eckes, the Indiana professor, also has a law degree and said the arguments for allowing rules against gay and transgender students — that they are based on “sincerely held religious beliefs” — mirror in troubling ways those once used by some private Christian schools to defend their ban on black students.
Bob Jones University, the evangelical Christian school in South Carolina, didn’t admit black students until 1971 and then only if they did not date or marry anyone outside their own race. University officials believed “that the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage,” according to a 1983 U.S. Supreme court opinion.
Goldsboro Christian Schools in North Carolina, then serving children in kindergarten through 12th grade, refused to enroll black children, the court said in that same opinion, citing the Bible and a belief that “mixing of the races is regarded as a violation of God’s command.”
The private schools could hold those beliefs, the nation’s top court decided, but they also could be stripped of the “public benefit” that comes from federal tax-exempt status because of their discriminatory practices.
Maryland’s scholarship program prevents participating private schools from discriminating against students based on sexual orientation or gender identity. But none of the other 15 states that offer scholarship programs to private schools prohibit those institutions from discriminating against LBGTQ students or staff, Eckes’ research has found, likely because state lawmakers want as many private schools as possible taking part in these programs.
At least 115 private schools in Georgia’s taxpayerfunded scholarship program had “explicit, severe anti-gay policies” or belonged to associations that espoused such views, according to a
2013 report by the Southern Education Association.
A 2017 investigation by Chalkbeat, an online education newspaper, found that about 10 percent of Indiana’s private schools taking state vouchers had anti-LGBTQ policies.
“I think there’s sometimes a sense that now that marriage equality is the law of the land, there is no longer any discrimination against gay and transgender people, and that is false,” said Caroline Mala Corbin, a law professor at the University of Miami.
The state could — and should — forbid anti-gay practices in institutions that want its scholarships, said Corbin, who teaches constitutional law courses and specializes in First Amendment issues.
“I think it’s inappropriate to direct our money to institutions that will discriminate,” she added.
School choice advocates argue that it’s parents, not the state, directing money to these religious schools, so it doesn’t amount to statesanctioned discrimination.
Florida’s scholarships have helped thousands of students attend “quality private schools,” and the proposed legislation would “punish Florida families for choosing a private school whose mission, values and teachings align with their religious beliefs,” said Jason Rachels, head of school at Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale, in an email.
The Sentinel contacted
30 private schools, including all those mentioned in this story, by email, phone and, in several cases, hand-delivered letters. Rachels was one of two administrators who shared their views.
His school educated at least 598 scholarship students last year, receiving at least $4 million in statebacked vouchers.
Its students must abstain from “homosexual behavior,” as the only permissible sexual relationship is between a married man and woman, school documents show. Those with other views are “in fundamental conflict with our sincerely held religious beliefs” and “something we are unable to support or facilitate in any manner in good conscience.”
If the bill protecting LGBTQ students in voucher programs passed, Florida would wade into a legal conflict, said Joseph Gibilisco, president of the Florida Coalition of Christian Private Schools Accreditation, which has 11 member schools that take state scholarships and have anti-gay policies.
“For a government to hold a faith-based school in contempt because that school embraces an historical and traditional position of human sexuality should be considered unequal treatment under the law and unconstitutional,” he said in an email.
Religious liberty is a fundamental right in the country, he added, so it would be troubling if a state took action “because of differences in belief and practice,” he added.
The rejection still stings for Cari and Nicole Haagenson, whose two oldest girls were refused admission when they wanted to return to Master’s Academy in Vero Beach. The school received at least $371,000 in state scholarship money to educate more than 60 students last year.
When Cari told her the children could not return to the school, Nicole initially assumed there had been a misunderstanding.
“I’m pretty sure they can’t discriminate against you,” she remembers telling her. “I was wrong. They definitely could, and they definitely did.”
“I think the big question is, ‘Hey citizens of the state of Florida ... Do you want your taxpayer money used in this way?”
Suzanne Eckes, professor in educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University