Public Ed in Florida under attack from HB 1. Ultimate goal--ed. privatization.
This is long, but important. Info from "Support Our Schools," Sarasota, organization that advocates for PUBLIC education.
House bill 1 (HB 1) "School Choice," a Florida House and Senate bill that dramatically expands enrollment in private schools at public expense is called "historic" by its supporters who claim that FL students will no longer be locked into "failing schools." The say that "ESAs", Educational Savings Accounts, central to BH 1, provide parents with educational options and flexibility. But critics fire back that HB 1 will destroy public education by eventually bankrupting public school districts.
This bill is modeled on Arizona legislation that passed in June 2022. It takes an existing school voucher program, the FES, Family Empowerment Scholarship, and make it universal. This means that all parents of students who live in Florida and and are eligible to enroll in K-12 public schools can receive close to $8K per year to attend a private school. It also opens the $8K payment to hundreds of thousands of students already enrolled in private school, including children of millionaires and even billionaires, as there are no longer any income caps. A Florida Senate companion bill, SB 202, was filed on Feb. 10, 2023.
HB1 is a comprehensive bill that radically restructures and transforms the current voucher-based FL scholarship programs into ESAs, Educational Savings Accounts that can be spent on a variety of programs, goods and services. Along with paying for private school, HB 1 legislation:
---expands the use of FES to include the purchase of instructional materials, curriculum, contracted services including part-time attendance at a public or private school and other approved expenditures,
---allows up to $24K to accumulate in an ESA which upon graduation can be used for higher education costs,
---includes homeschooled students--up to 10,000 of the 150,000 Florida homeschooled students in the first year, increasing to 20,00 in subsequent years and leaving to an eventual removal of the cap,
---expands the number of students with disabilities receiving FES-Unique Abilities, already utilizing ESA, from 1% to 3% of Florida ESE student population to eliminate the current FES-UA wait list.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has made HB 1 a top priority of his "education freedom" agenda that also includes attacking teacher unions, furthering cultural war attacks, and making school board races partisan. HB 1 has the enthusiastic backing of both Speaker of the Fl House Paul Renner and Senate President K. Passidomo. The legislation is supported by Charles Koch, who has been pushing for ESAs for many years through his Americans for Prosperity organization. It also has the support of Betsy Devos' American Federation for Children, and Jeb Bush's ExcelinEd.
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There's much more to say about the problems with this bill, but consider the implications of HB 1 for the future of public education in Florida--public education supporters view universal ESA as the death knell of public education and a ramp up to full education privatization.