Florida Alliance for Choices in Education

April 12, 2011

Dear Friends,

The DC voucher program was reauthorized as part of the budget deal! What a wonderful victory for the children and families of the capitol.

The budget deal reached between Congress and the White House includes funding for the DC OSP/DC Voucher. Apparently, the President and Majority Leader Reid put it on the table to Speaker Boehner during their intense discussions. The Speaker has been very committed to the DC OSP/ DC Voucher. Negotiations proceeded to the point of an eventual agreement resulting in 2,000 kids in D.C. being helped and them in turn helping to save the nation from a federal government shutdown!

Thank you for Stepping Up For Students,

Michael A. Benjamin
Executive Director
Step Up For Students, SUFS
Grassroots Advocacy & Outreach
www.stepupforstudents.com

APRIL 9, 2011
Last-Minute Deal Averts Shutdown
By NAFTALI BENDAVID And JANET HOOK

Reuters
John Boehner, center, announced a budget deal in the Capitol in Washington on Friday evening.

Congressional leaders reached a last-gasp agreement Friday to avert a shutdown of the federal government, after days of haggling and tense hours of brinksmanship.

Word of the deal came just an hour before a midnight deadline, as House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and President Barack Obama made separate appearances before TV cameras to hail what they said were its historically large budget cuts.

President Obama addresses the bipartisan agreement on the national budget from the Blue Room of the White House. Video courtesy of NewsCore.

Under the deal, the GOP won budget cuts of $39 billion for the remaining six months of the fiscal year, far more than either party had expected a few months ago. Democrats managed to hold off Republican demands to strip funding for the new health-care law and for a range of other Democratic priorities. GOP provisions to cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood of America and National Public Radio also were dropped.

Associated Press
Harry Reid returned to his office from the Senate Chamber after an agreement was reached to avert a government shutdown, at the Capitol.

Also in the deal is a provision requiring an annual audit of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been created by last year's Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Republicans have been widely critical of the law.

The budget battle was the first big standoff in the new Washington power structure created by November's midterm election, in which Republicans seized control of the House on a surge of voter complaints about government spending. As bitter as the weekslong fight was, it served merely as a warm-up for bigger and more consequential battles to come. Some Republicans say they will vote against raising the federal debt ceiling in a few weeks unless it is accompanied by a plan to rein in deficits. In addition the GOP has laid out cuts and proposals in its budget plan for the next fiscal year that dwarf the deal struck Friday in scope and size.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Obama holds a press conference after the budget agreement.
One apparent winner Friday was Mr. Boehner, who negotiated budget cuts that a few months ago would have been hard to envision. Democrats' opening position was for no cuts at all. The final deal is evidence Washington has now turned its attention from new spending to cutbacks.

"We fought to keep government spending down, because it really will in fact create a better environment for job creators in our country,'' Mr. Boehner said Friday night in announcing the agreement.

Mr. Obama, speaking from the White House near midnight, said the two parties had worked together to produce "the largest annual spending cut in our history," and that "both sides had to make tough decisions.'' Despite being pushed into making cuts his party initially opposed, Mr. Obama sought to turn the deal to his advantage by saying it would protect Democratic priorities, such as federal spending on education and environmental programs.

Related Articles
·         Boehner, Obama Remarks on Budget Deal
·         Behind the Scenes, Angry Meetings, Several Near Deals
·         Activists Give Boehner a Nod of Approval
·         Obama's Budget Aim: To Rise Above Fray
·         Debt Ceiling Looms as Next Big Battle
·         Budget Is Boehner's Big Test
·         Abortion Returns to Center Stage
·         Rove: Obama's Government Shutdown Gambit

Key elements of the deal that averts a government shutdown:
· Sets discretionary spending for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, at $1.049 trillion. That is $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010 and $79 billion less than President Obama had requested. House Republicans had wanted $22 billion in additional cuts.

· Includes $513 billion for defense – less than Republicans and President Obama wanted but more than the $508 billion provided in 2010.

· Drops Republican-backed provisions that would have ended funding for the new health-care law, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and National Public Radio.

· Drops Republican-backed provisions that would have barred funding for Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases and for the Federal Communications Commission to implement "net neutrality" rules.

· Bans the use of funds for the transfer of prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to the U.S. mainland.

· Calls for the Senate to take up-or-down votes on separate bills to cut off funding for the health-care law and to turn federal aid to family-planning programs into block grants to the states.

· Bans the use of any public funds – federal or local – to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.

· Re-establishes a school voucher system for the District of Columbia, a longtime cause of House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). The program provides low-income children with vouchers to attend a school of their parents' choice.

· Includes a mandate calling for an annual audit of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been created by last year's Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Republicans have been widely critical of the law.

Mr. Reid also hailed a "historic'' level of budget cuts.

Shortly after the leaders spoke, the Senate and House passed a short-term funding measure to keep the government operating until Friday. It was intended to give legislative leaders time to sort out final details of the broader agreement that covers the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Lawmakers were scrambling to beat a deadline of midnight, when legislation funding government operations was due to expire, leaving federal agencies without authority to spend money. While lawmakers bickered in public and aides to congressional leaders negotiated in private, federal agencies prepared to furlough an estimated 800,000 government workers, close national parks, passport offices and other operations, and suspend an array of federal services.

The deal set spending for the remainder of the year at $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010 and $79 billion less than Mr. Obama had requested. House Republicans had called for $22 billion in additional cuts.

The final package drops Republican-backed provisions that would have barred funding for Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases and for the Federal Communications Commission to implement "net neutrality" rules.

But it re-establishes a school voucher system for the District of Columbia, a longtime cause of House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). That program provides low-income children with vouchers to attend a school of their parents' choice.
Republicans had wanted to cut off funding for the new, Democratic-backed health-care law, and they wanted to turn federal aid to family planning programs into block grants to the states. The final deal includes neither provision, but it requires the Senate to take up-or-down votes on both of them.

Attention turned late Friday to how rank-and-file lawmakers would react to the details. House conservatives had warned for weeks they would oppose any agreement with cuts they believed were insufficient, but several of them indicated that they would vote for the compromise.
"I think it will be fairly widely supported,'' said Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus of House Republicans.

Negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders slogged forward Friday, with both sides reporting slow progress toward a deal to keep the government funded beyond midnight. Jerry Seib has the latest from Washington.

Some GOP lawmakers said they would oppose the deal. Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), current chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he planned to vote against it because the measure failed to meet the group's target of $61 billion in cuts.

Democratic leaders likely will have to contend with the party's sizable liberal faction, which could be furious that Messrs. Obama and Reid agreed to such spending reductions. Many Democrats are also dissatisfied with Mr. Obama's decision to keep a relatively low profile during much of the debate, only to surface at the end and try to position himself as the adult.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelsoi (D., Calif.) stopped short of endorsing the deal. "House Democrats look forward to reviewing the components of the final funding measure,'' she said.

The immediate implications of the budget deal will be limited, since it covers only the remaining six months of fiscal 2011. Its spending cuts come from only a portion of the federal budget, leaving untouched spending on the major health-care and pension entitlement programs that are not funded by annual appropriations.

But the budget fight has set the stage for other, more sweeping battles, as the divided capital takes on the 2012 budget and the nation's long-term deficits—and possibly spending on the popular Medicare and Social Security programs. Messrs. Boehner, Obama and Reid will likely be subjected to the same pressures in those debates as in this one.

Mr. Boehner has been caught between a desire to show that Republicans can use their new House majority to govern effectively and conservatives who discouraged compromise.

Mr. Obama has sought to stay above the fray, a strategy that risked making him appear disconnected from his party and the biggest issue of the day. And Democrats have given significant ground on spending while trying to tie the GOP to a tea party movement that Democrats continually describe as "extremist.''

A government shutdown would delay the release of economic data and that's keeping WSJ's Ahead of the Tape columnist Kelly Evans awake at night. But does anyone else care?

Throughout Friday, Messrs. Reid and Boehner were simultaneously jockeying with each other to deflect blame for the budget impasse while reaching out to their partisan bases.

Mr. Reid said a final obstacle to the deal was Mr. Boehner's insistence on changing the Title X program, which provides family-planning services to low-income women. Democrats said the GOP was pushing to turn Title X into a block grant to states, allowing conservative governors to gut the program because it would give them more discretion in how to use those funds.

"We are not bending on women's health," Mr. Reid said.

Mr. Boehner, by contrast, said differences over social provisions had largely been resolved and the final dispute was over spending levels. "There is only one reason that we do not have an agreement yet, and that reason is spending," Mr. Boehner said early on Friday.

Journal Community
Democrats argued that block-granting Title X, which has an annual budget of $317 million, would cripple it and damage Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which receives about one-fourth of Title X money.

Planned Parenthood provides abortions but by law can't use federal money for that procedure. Instead, Democrats said it uses Title X funds to provide such services as mammograms and cervical cancer screening to low-income women.

Still, many Republicans were upset at the notion of an abortion provider getting any federal money.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the Planned Parenthood political action committee donated $286,986 to federal candidates in the 2010 election cycle, 99% of it to Democrats.

—Carol E. Lee contributed to this article.

Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com

April 9, 2011

Black residents in St. Petersburg look to vouchers, charters for better school choices

By Ron Matus, Times Staff Writer
Black leaders tout the role of charter schools and vouchers for children.

Frustrated by poor test scores and dismal graduation rates, black residents in Pinellas County are increasingly exploring alternatives to traditional public schools.

Among the latest signs: a serious movement to start charter schools to serve black students; and plans to expand a well-regarded private school that relies heavily on kids with state-sponsored vouchers.
"The fact is, you have an unacceptable percentage of children from our community that are not graduating," said the Rev. Louis Murphy, pastor of Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg. "I'm not trying to bad-mouth anyone. I'm just saying it's not working."

Some charter school and voucher supporters say they want to complement traditional public schools, not undermine them. But some of them also say the statistics in Pinellas are beyond troubling.
In every grade that took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading, math and science last year, black students in Pinellas scored lower - and often far lower - than black students in the 11 other biggest districts in Florida. Meanwhile, jaws dropped last summer when a national report concluded the graduation rate for black males in Pinellas was 21 percent - the lowest of any big school district in the country.

The report was knocked as wildly misleading (a truer rate is about 50 percent, and rising). But it put a harsh, new spotlight on black students in Pinellas and, rightly or wrongly, fueled pessimism about the district's ability to turn things around.

"I wouldn't be honest if I told you that the people in the community here feel just great about the school system," said School Board member Lew Williams, who represents the predominantly black Midtown area in St. Petersburg.

Williams said there is still skepticism in the black community about vouchers, which many believe siphon money from public schools. But charters are getting more attention and, in his view, deserve more discussion.

"I've always advocated for the struggling kids," he said. "I would look at any alternative that we think could help them."

Dissatisfaction with public schools is not new in some black neighborhoods. But now, thanks to state and local efforts, there is more access than ever to alternatives.

Four of Stacey Owens' five sons have used a type of voucher called a tax-credit scholarship to attend private schools in St. Petersburg - three at Southside Christian Academy and one at Academy Prep. She said those private schools were more structured, more caring and more rigorous than the public schools her sons attended.

"I don't think he's being challenged," she said of her sixth-grader, now at Azalea Middle.

In the past five years, the number of Pinellas students receiving tax-credit vouchers has more than doubled, from 443 in 2006 to 1,020 this year. About 375 Pinellas parents tried to apply after the application period closed in September, including 150 from St. Petersburg, according to Step Up for Students, the Tampa-based outfit that oversees the program.

Tax-credit vouchers are available only to low-income students. Statewide, 70 percent of recipients are minorities.

This year, the Yvonne C. Reed Christian School in St. Petersburg has 65 of its 95 students on tax-credit scholarships, up from 42 last year. The school's founder, former public school teacher Yvonne Reed-Clayton, is working with Murphy to relocate the K-5 school to the Mount Zion church this fall.

Murphy wants to tie the school to the church's day care program and, eventually, to expand it through high school.

"It's my desire that we serve hundreds of kids, if not a few thousand," he said. "We're serious."

Vouchers are key to that vision. And they should be available as demand continues to spike. Legislative changes passed with bipartisan support last year ensure there will be enough corporate money to provide thousands of additional vouchers every year.

More charter seats for black students are on tap, too.

Charter schools, funded with public money but run by independent entities, are given more flexibility than other public schools in return for greater accountability. Some have floundered with low-income, minority kids, including the Imagine charter school in St. Petersburg, which has earned two F grades in a row.

But others are credited with huge successes, such as the KIPP schools that set up their first Florida campus in Jacksonville last year.

Last summer, in settling a decade-old lawsuit alleging discrimination against black students, the Pinellas School Board promised to give "full and prompt consideration" to charter school applications that are "located in and designed to serve student needs in the black community." It also agreed to an aspirational goal of at least 500 new charter seats for black students in the next five years.

"I think the feeling is, the more local control a group can have over the students and the institution, the better," said attorney Guy Burns, who represented the plaintiffs in the suit. "If you're on the board of a charter school, you have the ability to set the agenda, you have more authority and power."

Burns represented the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement when it applied to start an all-black charter school in St. Petersburg in 2000. The School Board said no because it would have violated the court-ordered race ratios that were in place at the time.
With race ratios gone, the Uhurus are again talking about a charter school. But they're not the only ones.

In the wake of the settlement, Burns and others have formed a group called the Learning Village to ease the startup of new charters.
Among those involved: Goliath Davis, the former St. Petersburg city administrator who was recently fired by Mayor Bill Foster; former state Rep. Bill Heller; Doug Tuthill, a former Pinellas teachers union president who is now president of Step Up For Students; and Linda Benware, a former Pinellas school administrator who was the first principal at St. Petersburg Collegiate High School, a highly successful charter school.
"Everybody's looking at alternative efforts â€¦ to deal with kids who are struggling," said Davis, the group's president. "Heretofore, those alternatives didn't exist. Now that they do, we want to look at the full menu of options."

Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8873.
Where the voucher students are

Here are the Pinellas County private schools with the most black students using tax-credit vouchers.

School	City	No. of black students with vouchers
Yvonne C. Reed Christian School	St. Petersburg	63
Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg	St. Petersburg	61
Southside Christian Academy	St. Petersburg	41
Lakeside Christian School	Clearwater	26
Classical Christian School for the Arts	Pinellas Park	17
Cornerstone Christian School	Dunedin	16
St. Petersburg Christian School	St. Petersburg	13
Esther's School	Pinellas Park	12
Elim Junior Academy	St. Petersburg	10

Source: Step Up for Students

Income Eligibility Guidelines
Number of people in household	Total Gross Monthly Household Income for New Applicants	Total Gross Monthly Household Income for Renewal Applicants
2	$2,247	$2,428
3	$2,823	$3,052
4	$3,400	$3,675
5	$3,976	$4,289
New Applicants - For each additional member add $577 Renewal Applicants - For each additional member add $623

75% Scholarship for Renewal Applicants Income Eligibility Guidelines
Number of people in household	Total Gross Monthly Household Income for New Applicants	Total Annual Household Income for Renewal Applicants
2	$2,429	$2,610
3	$3,053	$3,281
4	$3,676	$3,951
5	$4,299	$4,621
For each additional member add $670

50% Scholarship for Renewal Applicants Income Eligibility Guidelines
Number of people in household	Total Gross Monthly Household Income for New Applicants	Total Annual Household Income for Renewal Applicants
2	$2,611	$2,793
3	$3,282	$3,509
4	$3,952	$4,226
5	$4,622	$4,943
For each additional member add $717

Scholarship gives low-income students a Step Up

By GRAY ROHRER
Sunshine State News

As legislators continue to chew over education funding
in budget talks, a scholarship program funded with
corporate tax dollars is quietly performing better than normal
public education spending.

Step Up for Students gives scholarships to low-income
students that parents can put toward tuition at a private or
charter school, or for travel to a higher-performing public
school out of their area. The nearly decade-old program
has enjoyed widespread bipartisan support, and has only
expanded since its inception in 2002.

For the current school year, students getting scholarships
in the program received a $4,106 stipend to go to a
private school or up to $500 in transportation costs to a
higher-performing school. Florida currently spends
$6,811 per-student in PreK-12 public education, although
the Senate's budget passed this week includes a $423 cut
in per-student funding.

The per-student spending is less, but there are additional
savings to consider. The program came online in
2002, the same year the class-size amendment was voted
into law. School districts have had to contend with greater
pressure to reduce their class sizes, increasing infrastructure
costs.

"It's a cost avoidance in terms of construction costs
and operating costs for facilities and maintenance," said
Deborah Brodsky, director of the Center for Education
Performance and Accountability for Florida TaxWatch, a
research institute advocating for fiscal responsibility.

More than 33,000 students, attending more than 1,000
private schools, received scholarships this year as part of
Step Up for Students.

"It's a tremendous help for class sizes -- that's 33,000
students that we don't have to deal with on an inflexible
level," Brodsky said.

Corporate taxes are used to fund the program, for
which businesses earn tax credits that actually lower their
overall tax bill to the state.

"We like it because it's an opportunity for corporations
to put on our white hat and say we're doing something for
education," said Barney Bishop III, president and CEO of
Associated Industries of Florida.

Under the program, up to 75 percent of a company's
corporate income tax, up to 75 percent of an insurance
premium tax bill, up to 90 percent of the alcoholic beverage
excise tax, up to 100 percent of direct pay sales and
use taxes and up to 50 percent of a company's oil and gas
severance tax bill can be put toward the Step Up for Students
scholarship funds.

Although Gov. Rick Scott has pushed for a gradual
phase-out of the corporate income tax, advocates of the
scholarship program say the program's other revenue
streams, plus the massive legislative support for Step Up
for Students should keep it running even if Scott manages
to zero out corporate income taxes over time.

"They've been fairly nimble in finding a mutually
beneficial way of doing this," Brodsky said.

Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer @sunshinestatenews.com
or at (850) 727-0859.

Black residents in St. Petersburg look to vouchers, charters for better school choices

By Ron Matus, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, April 10, 2011

Southside Christian Academy kindergarteners, from left, D’Jia Lumpkin, 6, Yazmyn Mitchem, 6, and Amariah McDonald, 6, pray aloud together before lunch.

Frustrated by poor test scores and dismal graduation rates, black residents in Pinellas County are increasingly exploring alternatives to traditional public schools.

"The fact is, you have an unacceptable percentage of children from our community that are not graduating," said the Rev. Louis Murphy, pastor of Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg. "I'm not trying to bad-mouth anyone. I'm just saying it's not working."

Some charter school and voucher supporters say they want to complement traditional public schools, not undermine them. But some of them also say the statistics in Pinellas are beyond troubling.

In every grade that took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading, math and science last year, black students in Pinellas scored lower — and often far lower — than black students in the 11 other biggest districts in Florida. Meanwhile, jaws dropped last summer when a national report concluded the graduation rate for black males in Pinellas was 21 percent — the lowest of any big school district in the country.

"I've always advocated for the struggling kids," he said. "I would look at any alternative that we think could help them."

Dissatisfaction with public schools is not new in some black neighborhoods. But now, thanks to state and local efforts, there is more access than ever to alternatives.

Four of Stacey Owens' five sons have used a type of voucher called a tax-credit scholarship to attend private schools in St. Petersburg — three at Southside Christian Academy and one at Academy Prep. She said those private schools were more structured, more caring and more rigorous than the public schools her sons attended.

"I don't think he's being challenged," she said of her sixth-grader, now at Azalea Middle.

Tax-credit vouchers are available only to low-income students. Statewide, 70 percent of recipients are minorities.

Murphy wants to tie the school to the church's day care program and, eventually, to expand it through high school.

"It's my desire that we serve hundreds of kids, if not a few thousand," he said. "We're serious."

More charter seats for black students are on tap, too.

But others are credited with huge successes, such as the KIPP schools that set up their first Florida campus in Jacksonville last year.

With race ratios gone, the Uhurus are again talking about a charter school. But they're not the only ones.

In the wake of the settlement, Burns and others have formed a group called the Learning Village to ease the startup of new charters.

Among those involved: Goliath Davis, the former St. Petersburg city administrator who was recently fired by Mayor Bill Foster; former state Rep. Bill Heller; Doug Tuthill, a former Pinellas teachers union president who is now president of Step Up For Students; and Linda Benware, a former Pinellas school administrator who was the first principal at St. Petersburg Collegiate High School, a highly successful charter school.

"Everybody's looking at alternative efforts … to deal with kids who are struggling," said Davis, the group's president. "Heretofore, those alternatives didn't exist. Now that they do, we want to look at the full menu of options."

Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8873.

Where the voucher students are

Here are the Pinellas County private schools with the most black students using tax-credit vouchers.

School	City	No. of black students with vouchers
Yvonne C. Reed Christian School	St. Petersburg	63
Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg	St. Petersburg	61
Southside Christian Academy	St. Petersburg	41
Lakeside Christian School	Clearwater	26
Classical Christian School for the Arts	Pinellas Park	17
Cornerstone Christian School	Dunedin	16
St. Petersburg Christian School	St. Petersburg	13
Esther's School	Pinellas Park	12
Elim Junior Academy	St. Petersburg	10

Source: Step Up for Students