MEDIA ALERT
June 1, 2005

WITH THE NATION’S EYE ON FLORIDA’S SUPREME COURT,

TWO THOUSAND MARCHERS DESCEND ON THE STATE’S CAPITOL TO SUPPORT EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS

Students and Parents Will March in Support of Opportunity Scholarships; Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Endorses School Choice

WHAT:           An unprecedented number of organizations*, supporting educational options for Florida students, are hosting a “March for Opportunity”.  Two thousand parents and students who have benefited from Florida’s educational choice programs will march through the streets of the state capitol in support of Opportunity Scholarships.  Marchers will also issue a warning to Floridians that a negative Florida Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Holmes could cripple nearly a dozen scholarship programs serving more than 200,000 students. 

                The Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will, for the first time, publicly announce its support of school choice.

PHOTO OPS:      

o       Prior to June 7:  sign-making parties at local schools; bus caravan departures from schools statewide to Tallahassee

o       On June 7:

§       Thousands of Floridians marching toward the Florida Supreme Court
§       Students, parents and teachers donning t-shirts emblazoned with the universal sign for “warning”
§       Speakers:  Howard Fuller, former superintendent of public schools in Milwaukee when choice was implemented; John McKay, former Senator and namesake of the McKay Scholarships; Virginia Walden Ford, one of the first black children to integrate into public schools following Brown v. Board of Education, now Executive Director of DC Parents for School Choice; Julio Fuentes, President, Hispanic State Chamber of Commerce.

DATE/TIME:      Tuesday, June 7, 2005

- Marchers leave Civic Center at 9 a.m. and head toward Waller Park.
- Rally for march attendees begins at approximately 10:30 a.m. in Waller Park.  This follows oral arguments at Florida’s Supreme Court in the Bush v. Holmes case. Waller Park is located across from the Supreme Court on Duval Street

SUMMARY:        The Florida Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Bush v. Holmes, the legal battle over the state's groundbreaking Opportunity Scholarships school choice program, which enables parents in failing public schools to choose better-performing public or private schools for their children, including faith-based schools.  While those opposed to K-12 school choice argue that Opportunity Scholarships are unconstitutional "aid" to religious schools in violation of the Florida Constitution's Blaine Amendment, supporters of scholarship aid point out that such programs and educational choice aid parents and students and not religious institutions. Other states such as Wisconsin, Arizona and Illinois have constitutions similar to Florida’s and the courts have found programs like Opportunity Scholarships legal.  Every time teachers' unions have challenged school choice programs as violating a Blaine Amendment, they have lost.

Coalition includes: Black Alliance for Educational Options, Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, McKay Coalition and the Florida African American Education Alliance.

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Guest column

Vouchers are not education reform

By HOWARD L. SIMON
Published June 2, 2005

Ever since Jeb Bush became governor of Florida, he has championed programs that undermine the state's public school system by transferring tax dollars from public to private and church-run schools.

The Governor's Opportunity Scholarship Program (a.k.a. vouchers) was sold to the public as a way to help children trapped in "failing" schools, despite the Florida Constitution's clear language barring aid to religious institutions. Relying on this clever strategy, Bush and supporters of taxpayer financing of religious schools have now created four voucher programs, three of which have little to do with "failing" schools.

And now, finally, the showdown at the Florida Supreme Court: It is one of the most important cases in our state's history. For 137 years, the following words have appeared in the Florida Constitution: "No revenue of the state shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any sectarian institution." Three courts have reviewed the governor's voucher program. All have declared it unconstitutional. Because the Constitution is so clear, the voucher program is being defended by scare tactics and by calling defenders of public schools enemies of education reform.

The first tactic is to spread fear that if aid to church-run schools is not permitted, then the work of religious charities (e.g., Lutheran refugee resettlement programs, Catholic adoption agencies, Jewish Vocational Services, etc.) are also vulnerable to legal challenge. Our nation has been dependent on the wonderful work of religious charities since the birth of the Republic. But when religiously affiliated charities choose to contract with the government to deliver social services, they commit to serving the needs of the community - without proselytizing and without regard to the religious affiliation of who is served, and who is hired to serve. A second scare tactic warns that if the court upholds our constitutional tradition of no aid to religious institutions, the education of hundreds of children will be disrupted. But this rewards the governor's exploitation of the prolonged legal process in order to create "new facts." He has pressed forward with a scheme that was unconstitutional at its inception - and now claims foul that he might be thwarted. Claiming that defenders of public schools are enemies of education reform is just silly in light of the experimentation taking place throughout the country. There are magnet schools, charter schools and schools within schools. There are also reforms that could and should be adopted, such as parental choice to send children to any public school within a district and reorganizing "failing" schools. All these offer choices and increased opportunities for the involvement of parents in the education of their children.

Of course, the most effective reform involves putting kids in smaller classes that allow for more individualized attention. Research documents that this leads to higher achievement, especially in the early years, and particularly for poor and minority students. But Bush has resisted this reform and, even after adoption by the voters, has worked to undermine it. Vouchers for church-run schools are part of a political and ideological crusade, not a plan for education reform. True education reform would not include programs aimed at facilitating the abandonment of the public schools. Nor would true reforms exhibit such blind faith in the private sector as does Florida's voucher program - one that does not require certified teachers, that permits vouchers to be used at schools having no track record and exempts students attending private and church-run schools from state testing.

Private and parochial schools have made great contributions to America. But neighborhood public schools have been an engine of opportunity and a vehicle for advancement for generations of Americans, especially the poor and middle class.

Forget vouchers; work for the improvement of neighborhood public schools. The children of Florida and our democracy depend upon that.

Howard L. Simon is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. The ACLU is co-counsel in Bush vs. Holmes, the lawsuit challenging the voucher program.

[Last modified June 2, 2005, 01:07:17]

Gainesville Sun

Article published Jun 1, 2005

Jeb's half-baked pie

Voucher funding is enriching private academies
at the expense of underfunded public schools
Gov. Jeb Bush says that private school vouchers are as "American as apple-pie." But from the very beginning, Bush's apple-pie recipe for privatizing education reform was half-baked.

Start with the dubious notion that the way to "fix" public education is to take money away from poorly performing schools and give it to private academies in the form of "opportunity scholarship" vouchers. What happens to the students who must remain at chronically troubled, and chronically underfunded, schools? That's never been a concern for Bush.

Then there is the governor's double standard when it comes to measuring school performance. Under Bush's A-Plus plan, public schools are subjected to trial by test score. If a school's students perform well on the FCAT, it is rewarded financially. If a school's FCAT scores are below par, it is fiscally penalized.

So public schools are held accountable for the public dollars they receive. But what about the private schools that take state-funded vouchers? Do voucher students do better than public-school students? Nobody knows, and the state has shown virtually no interest in finding out.

Since it is an article of blind faith in Jeb Bush's Tallahassee that private schools are superior to public schools, no stringent measures of accountability are required. Indeed, oversight of private schools' use of voucher funding was so lax that Bush's Department of Education became embroiled in a series of scandals, as tax dollars were handed out indiscriminately to "schools" that, in some cases, turned out to be little more than scam operations.

The voucher scandals led lawmakers this year to push bills intended to hold voucher schools to higher standards of performance and accountability. The bad news is that the legislation died with the session. The good news is that the governor's latest attempt to dramatically expand voucher use in Florida also died.

Ultimately, it will be the Florida Supreme Court that will make the final call on vouchers. The state's constitution has a fairly explicit ban on taking money from the "public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution." Since many voucher schools are church-affiliated, two lower courts have already held Bush's voucher programs to be unconstitutional.

Perhaps Gov. Bush can read the handwriting on the wall. Once Florida's most vocal champion of vouchers as crucial to education reform, these days he downplays vouchers as "a small part of a broad strategy to create a climate for rising student achievement."

Even if the Florida Supreme Court were to, somehow, find vouchers are indeed constitutional, it appears that the Legislature is growing wary of the notion that the way to reform public education is to throw money at private schools. We predict that, ultimately, Florida's flirtation with private-school vouchers will be remembered as a half-baked vanity on the part of a governor who confused political platitude with good public policy.

 

 

WE’LL SEE YOU IN TALLAHASSEE…