Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
36 schools OK’d for voucher money
Three dozen Florida private schools have been approved to receive statebacked scholarships for the 2019-20 academic year, the first time when site visits by Department of Education staff are required before campuses can start receiving money.
Education department staff visited 40 schools, 36 of which were compliant. The number of new operators is down significantly since the 2017-18 school year, when 151 campuses were approved. That count may have included a few schools that started getting scholarship money mid-year.
Most Florida public schools return to class Monday, though private schools sometimes follow different schedules.
The department has added five employees whose duties include conducting site visits at private schools and responding to complaints about them as a result of the legislation, spokeswoman Cheryl Etters wrote in an email. She was unable to provide an estimate of the expense of adding the employees and the department ignored repeated requests for an interview with staff members about the process.
The Orlando Sentinel reported in 2017 that some of the schools that take vouchers, free from most state rules, have hired teachers with criminal records, set up in rundown facilities and faced eviction mid-year. The new requirement was part of a controversial and multipronged 2018 law (HB 7055) that made things tougher for local teachers unions and created a fourth scholarship to pay for private school tuition for students who say they were bullied in public schools. The law also tried to make it harder for school operators who take Florida scholarships to forge fire or health inspections or to hide convictions of school owners.
Education department staff focus on clerical matters during visits and don’t make judgments about the curriculum or quality of the education provided at the school. For example, department employees ensure schools can present proof their workers have passed background checks; that they provide quarterly progress reports to parents; that they’ve passed fire and health inspections; and that they keep records of students’ attendance and immunizations.
Many of the program requirements continue to be vague.
For example, the law says teachers must have three or more years of experience; a bachelor’s degree or higher; or “special skills, knowledge or expertise that qualifies them to provide instruction in subjects taught.” But the rules don’t spell out what type of skills, knowledge or expertise is required. The Sentinel found many schools hire teachers who don’t have degrees and have few, if any, other qualifications.
Aside from new campuses, department staff can visit schools that have been the subject of complaints or have failed to meet program requirements within the previous two years. But the department can’t take action unless the school has broken specific rules, such as hiring staffers who haven’t passed background checks or claiming scholarship money for students who don’t attend class.
Critics of the state’s voucher programs, such as the Florida League of Women Voters, have argued for more accountability, including requiring students in private schools that receive public money to take the same tests as students in the public schools and report the results.
“The more oversight, the better, because these schools are exempt from so many different areas of oversight,” said Patricia Brigham, the Florida group’s president.
Supporters of school vouchers maintain that allowing parents to choose the schools where they want to enroll their children — and change course if they’re not satisfied — provides much of the accountability necessary to weed out low-performing schools.
Patricia Levesque, executive director of the provoucher Foundation for Florida’s Future, wrote in an email she was supportive of the new site visit requirement.
“We’ve always supported Florida lawmakers’ efforts to ensure the quality of schools serving private education choice scholarship students,” she wrote.
Central Florida campuses new to the voucher programs for this year include Ignyte Performing Arts Learning Center in Kissimmee, which “after months of demand” had “carefully crafted” an elementary school program, according to the school’s website.
Another, Florida Preparatory Academy in Melbourne, is a long-established day and boarding school. Formerly a military-style school called “Florida Air Academy,” the school changed its name in 2015 to “more accurately reflect its college preparatory identity.”
Fewer students enrolled in the Florida Tax Credit program, the state’s largest scholarship, this past school year. That drop might have discouraged additional schools from signing up to take scholarships, said Jon East, a spokesman for Step up for Students, which administers the program.
Enrollment in the program decreased more than 8% statewide, to 99,453 students during the 2018-19 school year.
East said Step up for Students employees, who talk with school operators regularly, hadn’t heard that the new requirements were keeping them from signing up for the voucher programs.
He said growth in the Florida Tax Credit program, as well as the new Family Empowerment Scholarship signed into law by Gov. Rick DeSantis in May, might reverse the trend.
The Family Empowerment Scholarship, the state’s fifth such program, could allow middle-income students to receive vouchers. Up to 18,000 scholarships may be awarded during the first year at an estimated cost of $130 million. Etters was unable to provide the number of students who had signed up. For the League, Brigham said, the main concern is the vouchers are diverting resources that could have been used in public schools, which they say are underfunded.