Amendment would hurt public schools
Tallahassee politicians keep trying to hide their real education agenda. They fooled us with the lottery amendment. They fooled us with measures to water down our class size limits.
Now they are trying to fool us again with the following amendment:
School board term limits and duties; public schools. Creates a term limit of eight consecutive years for school board members and requires the Legislature to provide for the promotion of civic literacy in public schools. Currently, district school boards have a constitutional duty to operate, control and supervise all public schools.
The amendment maintains a school board’s duties to public schools it establishes but permits the state to operate, control and supervise public schools not established by the school board.
If you read to the last two sentences, you will see that this proposal by the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (CRC) would take power away from our local elected school boards and give it to an unelected, unaccountable state board with free rein to create charter schools whenever and wherever they want.
Local elected school boards won’t be able to approve these charter schools, run them or supervise them — but you can bet that our tax dollars will pay for them, and that means fewer dollars for traditional public schools.
Worse, this would create competing systems of public schools in each county and that will, in turn, create chaos and extra costs for local public school systems.
Who is advocating this radical idea? A 37-member CRC appointed by Gov. Rick Scott and those same Tallahassee politicians who stand to gain from it.
Why? So that private for-profit charter companies can drain even more tax money from our public schools and put it into their own pockets. It’s a massive power grab by Tallahassee politicians and for-profit charter companies.
They know voters would be outraged if they understood the scheme. So they’re trying to hide it behind language they think voters will like. Language that requires schools to teach civics ... something our schools already do. Language to apply term limits to school board members ... something local voters should decide.
And, because they know voters are fed up with funding charter schools at the expense of our public schools, they intentionally tried to deceive voters by removing the word “charter” from the language.
This con game is just another dirty trick that will hurt our local public schools.
Voters need to protect Florida’s public education system and show that they’ve had enough double talk and confusion on this education issue.
The CRC Proposal 6003 would:
■ Remove control of our public schools from the school boards we elect and give it to a board of unidentified bureaucrats in Tallahassee.
■ Drain more tax dollars from our local schools.
■ Use our public school tax dollars to enrich forprofit charter companies and the politicians who support them.
Florida voters and taxpayers shouldn’t let themselves be fooled. Again.
It’s time to do what is right for our children.
Our future. And protect the education system we thrived and succeeded in.
This is our legacy. Make it last.
PAMELA S. GOODMAN,