Ziegler
Yet another member of a Florida school board is denouncing the lawsuit that the Florida schools boards association and others filed to kill the nation’s largest private school choice program.
In an op-ed published Monday by the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler said losing the state’s tax credit scholarship program “would be a tragedy.”
“The more educational options there are, the more opportunity there is for parents to find the one that works for their child,” Ziegler wrote. “We all know education starts at home. But when you take away the power of parents to choose what is best for their children, you erode their will to engage. That is bad for every part of our community. We must empower our families. Choice empowers.”
The 13-year-old scholarship program is serving nearly 70,000 low-income students around the state this year. It’s administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.
Ziegler is the fourth sitting member of a Florida school board to write a newspaper commentary panning the suit. She said she reached out to many scholarship parents after the lawsuit was filed in August and “was moved by many of their stories and what the opportunities provided by the scholarship program had meant to them.”
"So many of the family members I spoke with shared stories about how this scholarship program gave them hope that their children would have opportunities beyond what they had," she continued. "It empowered them to know that they, as the parents, were in charge of the future of their children. They were no longer helpless. This is critical, because neither I nor my colleagues know what is best for every child. Parents do."
Read the full op-ed here.
