Faith Manuel
Editor's note: There's no doubt school choice parents made their voices heard during this year's debate over tax credit scholarships in the Florida Legislature. They packed committee meetings, responded to misleading news stories and even took on the PTA. Several also penned op-eds for major newspapers in Florida. The latest may be the most powerful.
It's written by Faith Manuel in response to an off-the-mark news story in the Daytona Beach News Journal. Ms. Manuel notes her son, a former scholarship student, is now studying to be a teacher at Florida State College in Jacksonville, so he can "return the blessing of his education to the state of Florida." Then she asks some of those obvious questions that somehow get lost in the coverage:
I wouldn't use the word “poor” to describe our family. The fact that my children have been able to benefit from the state's Tax Credit Scholarship program is a blessing. We are not “poor;” we're thankful.
My oldest son is currently on the President's List at Florida State College in Jacksonville. He's majoring in education and wishes to return the blessing of his education to the state of Florida as an educator.
For me, a single mom, the scholarship is not a political statement. It's not a criticism of Volusia County public schools, where my other son is doing quite well. It has nothing to do with public vs. private.
The scholarship just gives me another school option, and it worked big-time for Davion, my college student who was born when I was 15. It is putting my middle-school daughter on the same path.
So, as a parent who read The Daytona Beach News-Journal's front-page story April 20 about this program, I was left to wonder: Why must this be controversial? When an attorney for the Florida Education Association calls the Tax Credit Scholarship “a money-laundering scheme” and questions whether the program should exist at all, it leads me to wonder if his real motivation is education at all. Why would anyone attack and demean a program that has been so beneficial to so many families? To me, it's not so much about if students are educated via private or public education. What's most important is that they are being educated. They are being trained and groomed, and in the case of my children (and the many other children we've encountered these past seven years), they are becoming great citizens who give back to this community.
Read the full op-ed here.
