Editor’s note: This opinion piece from Sara Pierre of Sunrise appeared online Thursday at the South Florida Times.
Twenty years ago, I came to this country from Haiti seeking a better life. Today, I’m a single mother to six special-needs children, all of whom also have sickle cell disease. There is plenty of love in my family – but I do have my hands full.
I am fortunate I have Florida education choice scholarships to help me meet these challenges.
Three of my children – Jennifer, 11, Carlos, 12, and Jefferson, 15 – receive the Gardiner Scholarship, an education savings account program for students with special needs. They are on the autism spectrum. My daughter Brettany, 13, receives the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students; she has ADHD. It would be wonderful to have the same kind of flexible spending with her scholarship that Gardiner provides for my other children.
(I have another child on the autism spectrum who attends a public school because it best meets her needs, and my youngest is not yet eligible for a scholarship.)
So, I’m happy to see a bill in the Florida Senate that would combine Gardiner with the McKay scholarships for special needs students into one program and would do the same for the tax credit scholarship and the income-based Family Empowerment Scholarship. The new income-based scholarship program would become an education savings account like how Gardiner works.
That means giving more families more ways to spend their children’s education dollars. They can choose to spend it on school tuition, technology, learning materials, therapies, and other educational uses – matching them with their children’s needs.
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