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Overview of School Vouchers
Vouchers (or "opportunity scholarships" as they are now euphemistically called) are government payments to private schools or to parents to subsidize student attendance at nonpublic schools. On Monday, June 21, 1999, Governor Jeb Bush's new "A+ education plan" was enacted, including Fla. Stat. §229.0537, the "Opportunity Scholarship Program" component. The education plan assigns every public school a grade, A through F, based on student performance on the FCAT, or the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The students at schools graded F in two out of four years (during one of which the student was in attendance) have three options - if they wish to transfer to another school. First, such students may attend a designated higher-performing public school in their school district. Second, such students may attend - on a space available basis - any public school in an adjacent school district. Third, such students may attend any private school, including a sectarian or religious school, which has admitted the student and has agreed to comply with the requirements set forth in the Voucher Plan.
If a student chooses the third option, the state will pay an amount "equivalent" to the "public education funds" that would have been expended on a public education for the student in tuition and fees at a qualifying private school and will continue to do so until the student graduates from high school. The amount could range from $3,000 to $25,000, depending on the extra services the student needs. Although the amount of school vouchers may not exceed the amount charged by a qualifying private school in tuition and fees, there is nothing in the Voucher Plan that would prevent a private school from raising its tuition and fees to capture the maximum available return under the voucher plan, or even from charging higher tuition for those students attending the school under the auspices of the voucher plan.
Participating private schools must "determine on an entirely random and religious-neutral basis, which students to accept," and comply with the prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin set forth in 42 U.S.C. §2000d. However, despite private schools having to agree that they will not "compel any student - to profess a specific ideological belief, to pray or to worship," (emphasis added) the voucher plan does not prohibit a school from requiring a student to receive religious instruction nor does it place any limitation on the uses to which private and parochial schools can put voucher payments.
Parents are required to notify the state of their intent to request a school voucher for their child by no later than July 1 of the school year in which they intend to use the voucher. The first round of voucher payments is scheduled to be made on August 1 of this year for the 1999-2000 school year.
Two elementary schools in Pensacola will be the first in the state to qualify for vouchers in the upcoming school year. At least five schools, four of them Catholic, have agreed to accept voucher students. While the program will start small, it could explode as the state raises standards for schoolchildren and more schools are given a failing grade. In the next school year (2000-2001), up to 156,000 Florida schoolchildren may obtain vouchers, roughly eight times that of the rest of the nation combined. Moreover, no other state bases its voucher program on student performance, and Florida's plan has attracted national attention for that reason, as well.
Gov. Bush's education plan attempts to rescue children in the worst performing schools, students who are disproportionately the poorest, neediest children. The voucher plan, however, violates both the U.S. and the Florida Constitution and will make it more difficult to help students who will be attending more impoverished public schools.
