St. Augustine Record: Sandra Parks on stopping government funds to private schools with "vouchers"

Guest column: Stop funding private schools with state vouchers
Posted: January 16, 2011 - 12:00am

By SANDRA PARKS

On Tuesday, Jan. 18, the Florida Board of Education will meet in Pensacola to hear appeals from 35 counties regarding $43 million in fines for failure to comply with the class-size amendment. While St. Johns County schools comply with class-size requirements, the same policies that prevent other school districts from meeting this unfunded voter mandate also limits the quality of education in our county.

In 1997 Florida ranked 29th nationally in state funding for education. Then, about 60 percent of school funding came from the state, largely from sales taxes paid by all Floridians and our visitors.

Today Florida is among the lowest states in the country in public education funding. Only 38.5 percent comes from the state with 54 percent paid by local taxes.

For the last decade the Legislature has shifted the cost of public education from widely-distributed state revenue to local property taxpayers. When the public referendum rolled back property taxes and the housing market collapsed, local school districts were thrown into a financial crisis that made it impossible for many counties to comply with unfunded mandates.

Since 2002, while cutting state funding or failing to keep pace with the growing costs of public education, the Florida Legislature authorized more than $500 million to fund Corporate Tax Credit vouchers to send students to private schools, 85 percent of which are religious schools. For the 2010-2011 school year alone, up to $140 million of diverted tax money is awarded to private schools with no public accountability, no FCAT, no requirement for accreditation or teacher certification.

Although St. Johns County has no failing schools, 144 local students K-12 attend private schools on CTC vouchers. Step Up for Students, the organization that administers CTC, reports that only five percent of these students would attend private schools without the vouchers. Using that estimate St. Johns County schools lost more than $930,000 in state revenue -- the $6,843 per student that St. Johns County would receive if those 137 students attended public schools.

Florida citizens must evaluate how these funding policies affect the quality of the education that our students receive. Gov. Rick Scott proposes yet more privatizing of Florida education. Most of our local legislators have supported these policies, including Rep. Bill Proctor and Sen. John Thrasher, two of the most influential legislative leaders in education policy.

The Legislature has a "paramount" constitutional responsibility to fund a public education system, including implementation of the class-size amendment. Yet it consistently relies more on local taxpayers to fund public schools and instead gives more than $100 million each year to schools with no public transparency or accountability. Is this trend in public education funding what we want our legislative delegation to pursue?

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Sandra Parks is an author and former St. Augustine City Commissioner. She was educated in St. Johns County public schools and holds degrees from Florida Southern College, the University of South Florida, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.