Home » About » Newsletters » February 2000
School Voucher Case Faces Key Court Hearing
By Jessica Connor
Public Education Coordinator
February 2000
After months of positioning, the constitutional challenge to the Florida school voucher scheme will be heard in Leon County Circuit Court (Tallahassee) on February 24.
Voucher proponents, represented by the Washington-based Institute for Justice, filed a motion in August 1999 seeking to dismiss claims by the ACLU and other education and civil rights organizations that Gov. Bush's "Opportunity Scholarship Program" violates Article IX, Section 1, of the Florida Constitution. The motion was denied in November 1999 by Leon County Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith. The final hearing scheduled in February may decide whether those particular claims have merit.
If Judge Smith decides that using tuition-vouchers to subsidize private and religious schools violates the Florida Constitution, his ruling will effectively void the school voucher program in Florida.
The Florida voucher program grades schools on an "A-F" basis and allows children at schools graded "F" in two out of four years to use a state-funded tuition voucher at any private school, including a religious school. The ACLU and other groups brought suit in June 1999 (Holmes v. Bush), arguing that Florida's school voucher plan violates both the Florida Constitution and the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The question before the court is whether using government money to subsidize private schools through the school voucher program violates a state constitutional provision that mandates public money be used solely for public, not private, education. Article IX, Section 1, of the Florida Constitution provides, "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education...." According to the brief filed by the ACLU and its co-counsel, Article IX, Section 1, requires the state to fulfill this constitutional mandate to provide for the education of all Florida children through free public schools.
Under the Florida voucher scheme, once a student receives a voucher, the student may continue to attend a private school at public expense at least until he or she finishes middle school, regardless of any change in the "grade" assigned to the student's public school in the interim. The student remains eligible for a voucher through high school as well, even if the public high school to which he or she otherwise would have been assigned has never been designated a "failing" school.
The plaintiffs' complaint also claims that the voucher program violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 3, of the Florida Constitution, which provides for religious freedom, and Article IX, Section 6, which mandates that the state school fund shall only be appropriated to free public schools. However, these issues will not be addressed in the February 24 hearing, which will solely address Article IX, Section 1.
School vouchers effectively abandon the public school system, which is one of the major reasons why plaintiffs banded together so quickly to challenge the voucher program. Vouchers take needed money from poor, "failing" schools and give that money to private schools and schools that are graded "A" or "B," instead of giving the "failing" school resources to reduce class size, develop innovative programs, and provide computers, adequate books and supplies. And, while some students at "failing" schools will use school vouchers to attend private, mostly parochial, schools, most students will remain behind in public schools that are more impoverished than before.
