Education Week - April 17, 2019 - 14

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Fla. Lawmakers Push to Extend Vouchers Into Middle Class
Vouchers for bullied
students draw scrutiny
By Arianna Prothero
Florida-already home to a thriving ecosystem of vouchers-is making a new run at expanding the numbers of families who are eligible for taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their
children to private school.
At the same time, the state's still-new vouchers for bullied students are causing confusion
among school district leaders even as demand
for them has fallen way short of expectations in
the program's first year.
Lawmakers are making a full-court press to
extend vouchers to thousands of new students,
including many from middle-class families.
Legislation to make that a reality is circulating in the Florida legislature, and with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a staunch ally of
vouchers at the helm, school choice supporters

are feeling optimistic about its prospects.
And three of the state's more-liberal justices
reached their term limits, giving DeSantis an
opportunity to appoint a new conservative
majority to the state supreme court.
"For years, Florida has been advancing
public and private school choice options for
parents, but for the first time though, there
is an opportunity to think much more broadly
about what those options are," said Patricia
Levesque, the chief executive officer of the
Foundation for Excellence in Education, an
influential group that advocates for school
choice.
The most ambitious move is a bill proposed
in the House to create Family Empowerment
Scholarships, which would raise the income
eligibility for families to receive state funding
to send their children to private school. The
income cap for participation would peak at
$96,000 a year for a family of four. The proposal
would subsidize tuition for up to an additional
28,000 students to attend private schools.
The Senate version is more modest. It would

create up to 15,000 vouchers and cap income
eligibility at roughly $66,000 a year.
While there are significant differences between the House and Senate bills, some version of the Family Empowerment Scholarship
program is expected to pass as the idea has
support from House and Senate leadership as
well as the governor.

Union Resistance
But any proposed expansion of vouchers will
likely meet with opposition from the state's
largest teachers' union, which has been the
case with nearly every state effort to expand
vouchers.
"We are anticipating them moving forward
and we will do what we have to as an organization and if that means we have to go to
court, we will," said Fedrick Ingram, the president of the Florida Education Association.
The FEA led the charge against the state's
first voucher program and won, back in 2006.
But the union's track record in challenging

later iterations of that program has not been
so successful.
The union has fought both vouchers and
charter schools largely on the grounds that
they siphon money away from regular district
schools and create a separate system of education when the state's constitution calls for a
uniform, public one.
"It's a false competition and it's a false
choice," said Ingram.
"All public schools have certified teachers.
All private schools do not. All public schools
have a state test, whether we like it or not;
private schools do not," he said. "We have a
system of Florida standards that we have to
adhere to, whether we agree on the merits or
not; private schools do not."
One recent poll shows popular opinion is on
the side of school choice advocates.
Florida Atlantic University polled registered
voters in March and found that 52 percent supported expanding vouchers to include middleincome families while only 29 percent opposed
PAGE 16 >

States' Progress Uneven
In K-12 Funding Battles
At the beginning of this year,
the National Conference of State
Legislatures predicted there was
a chance that more than half of
states could finally overhaul the antiquated-and, advocates say, often
inequitable-formulas that have
been dictating their K-12 funding
for years.
The political and fiscal environment was ripe. Many states were
flush with cash. Teachers were demanding more money for schools in
general along with salary increases.
And there was widespread agreement among district administrators
that funding formulas were both
outdated and insufficient in fairly
distributing school aid.
But balancing state and local resources, deciding which districts
should get what, and figuring out
how to distribute money in a way
that will spur academic achievement is tricky.
While there's a strong chance that
states such as Maryland and Texas
are likely to see major changes to
state spending patterns as a result
of decisions made this legislative
season, others, such as Idaho and
Nevada, have had a hard time getting funding formula replacement
efforts off the ground.
Virtually every legislator gets
involved with school funding formula debates since they each have
vocal constituents at risk of gaining or losing state aid. And antitax advocates, parents, and teachers-groups with get-out-the-vote
prowess-are among those at the

forefront. Getting hundreds of legislators on the same page with a funding formula is a political feat.
Here's a snapshot as of last week
of some of the most animated political battles this legislative season to
replace, update, and legally grapple with school funding formulas.
These situations remain politically
fluid, and in some of these cases-
and in other states- funding bills
have failed even to make it out of
legislative committee or withered
early in the legislative session.

Kaitlyn Dolan for Education Week

By Daarel Burnette II

IDAHO
The prospects appeared high
earlier this year for Idaho to push
through a new funding formula.
Its current formula is more than
25 years old. But early in the process, the effort stumbled after
teacher groups, school administrators, legislators, and school funding
advocacy groups couldn't agree on
teacher pay, weights for some student groups, and whether to base
school funding on attendance or
enrollment. Instead, lawmakers
this year are expected to pass a
watered-down bill that will require
the state to start collecting moreaccurate enrollment data. Because
the state is so rural, many students
take some courses online, as well
as at charter schools and at traditional public schools, making money
distribution especially complicated.
Before the state's legislative session ended March 28, lawmakers
pledged to tackle approving a new
funding formula during next year's
legislative session.

14 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 17, 2019 | www.edweek.org

KANSAS

MARYLAND

Kansas' funding formula has
been under legal scrutiny for several years, and the state's supreme
court last year demanded that the
state increase the amount of money
it provides to schools or risk having
the entire funding formula deemed
unconstitutional, forcing the state's
schools to shut down. On April 6,
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed
a bill that would provide $90 million for each of the next three
years to the state's public schools.
The question now is whether that
amount will satisfy the state's supreme court. Lawyers for the four
school districts that sued the state
in the Gannon v. Kansas funding
lawsuit, have said the state will fall
$270 million short of what districts
need to provide an adequate education. The court will hear the latest
twist in this case on May 9.

Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican,
as of last week was faced with signing or vetoing a newly passed measure that would over the next two
years contribute $850 million more
in state revenue toward schools. It's
seen in the state as a down payment
on a new funding formula being
pushed by a legislature-appointed
commission. The new money is to be
used for increasing teacher pay, expanding prekindergarten programs,
and establishing more wraparound
services in high-poverty schools.
All are things recommended by
the commission chaired by William
Kirwan, the former chancellor of
the University of Maryland system.
Legislators couldn't agree on several
other recommendations, including
how they would be able to afford
a $3.8 billion funding increase by
PAGE 16 >

Thousands of educators
and advocates
demonstrate at the
Maryland State House in
Annapolis last month to
put education issues-
high among them school
funding and teacher pay-
front and center for state
lawmakers.
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Education Week - April 17, 2019

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