Publicly funded education options should be within reach for everyone

Twenty years ago, Florida spearheaded a school choice movement that changed the face of public education.

This took strong action, steadfast resolve and the unyielding commitment of several generations of state leaders.

Real and lasting change is not for the timid.

Now, it is time to envision what the next 20 years will bring, led by a newly elected governor who is perfect for the job.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has proven he is not bound by past conventions. He is a leader who embraces the big and bold.

We’ve already seen him tackle education issues, addressing everything from standards and accountability to teacher retention and school choice funding.

Obviously, he is not one to waste time. One does not select former House Speaker Richard Corcoran for education commissioner, as DeSantis did, to drive in the righthand lane.

We are excited by the possibilities. It is why Shawn Frost, Scott Shine and I, all with backgrounds as school board members in Florida, have formed the School Choice Movement organization.

We consider ourselves a mouthpiece for Florida families who agree that parents should be given the opportunity to choose where their children go to school. Our mission is to ensure their voices are heard and to act boldly on behalf of their children. The foundation has been laid.

Thanks to past reforms, parents now receive objective information about their children’s learning progress. They can access information about the quality of their schools.

If they are not satisfied, hopefully they will have options. In the choice realm, the state has opened the door to charter schools, virtual schools, private scholarship schools and education savings accounts for the parents of students with disabilities.

These choices, traditional public schools remaining one of them, make up our state’s publicly funded education.

The system we have today is almost unrecognizable from what existed 20 years ago. Likewise, we hope today’s system is just as unrecognizable in 2039.

To accomplish this, we must redefine and reimagine the entire concept of “public education.”

Publicly funded education is not a headquarters building. It is not school boards or school superintendents or administrators or teachers unions.

Instead, publicly funded education should be viewed as an ideal, one that says we must provide every child with the capacity to succeed in life. How that is accomplished, should not matter. Only the desired outcome.

Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Not by a long shot.

School districts usually assign children to schools by drawing attendance maps. They don’t get into details, such as whether a particular school is a good fit for a particular child. It is the responsibility of the children to adapt to the school. If they do not, it is on them, not the schools. Such are the realities of large bureaucracies.

And unfortunately, bureaucracies tend to make themselves the priority. Children become funding sources, and competitors become the enemy.

This is magnified when you have school boards that serve without term limits, a recipe for arrogance and entrenchment.

Our years in public education taught us that people sitting in far-away buildings are not qualified to make profound decisions about children they do not know.

Deciding how a child is educated is a highly personal task that should be reserved for those who know the child best – the parents. Their ability to do so should not depend on whether they have the resources to buy their way out of the system.

The ideal of what public education should be too often conflicts with the reality of what it has become.

We overcome this by increasing the power of parents, by providing them with more education options for their children.

We unshackle charter schools by removing school districts as their overlords. We increase private-school choice and incentivize the best of them to participate. We expand our most effective programs until every single family in Florida has a choice of high-quality education options.

Instead of automatically funding bureaucracies, we should fund parents so they can customize education plans for their children.

With all the progress that’s been made, too many parents remain trapped in the status quo. Let’s not wait another 20 years to resolve that.

All parents should have multiple choices that are accessible and transparent.

There should be no waiting lists. There should be no exhausted funding sources. There should be no first-dibs on kids.

And with the new leadership now in place in Tallahassee, there should be no dawdling in getting us there.

Erika Donalds is chairman of the board of the School Choice Movement. She’s a mother of three boys and a former Collier County School Board member.

By Erika Donalds