The push to create individual accounts for students with disabilities picked up bipartisan support in its first Senate committee hearing Tuesday.
But the bill to create “personalized accounts for learning” that parents could use to pay for tutoring and therapy for their children also attracted opposition from groups like the Florida PTA and the statewide teachers union.
Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, said the proposal would be confined to “a very small population of our students” with conditions like spina bifida and cerebral palsy, which would qualify them for a high level of accommodations in the public school system.
“It’s just very difficult for our system to meet all their needs,” she said during the Senate Education Committee hearing. “This gives them another option for their parents to decide the best approach to get their child the best education.”
Several public school teachers spoke against the bill. Joy Jackson, a teacher at Robert Renick Educational Center in Miami-Dade County, said the program could compete for scarce resources with the accommodations made by school districts.
“This is currently a very small population, but if history with these programs has shown us anything, it is that as soon as these programs are made available, they become quite large, quite fast,” said Lynda Russell of the Florida Education Association.
The bill received support in previous hearings from parents who educate their special-needs children at home. They were joined Tuesday by Elias Seife, a Miami-Dade parent who said his daughter has received “excellent support” in the public school system.
“I believe that parents with children with disabilities should a have a right to use their public monies to be used in alternate schools if they deem that the public schools are not providing them with the services that their children are lawfully entitled to receive,” he said. “Having a choice is not a bad thing.”
The Senate panel approved the bill on a 7-2 vote. Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, voted for the bill, but said he had concerns about the plan and would like to see more state funding for “services that are needed and deserved in schools today.”
Stargel’s proposal also would affect students who decide to remain in public schools. It would do away with special diplomas, instead pushing more special-needs students to receive a standard high school diploma. She said the standard diploma is a more “meaningful document” that would give students more opportunities after they graduate high school.
The bill also includes a provision that would address a a separate controversy affecting special-needs students. It would require state education officials to offer permanent exemptions from state standardized testing for students with severe physical or cognitive conditions.
Under the House version of the bill, the personalized accounts would be managed by scholarship funding organizations. One such organization is Step up for Students, which co-hosts this blog.
