Patrice Harding, a Head Start teacher in the Polk County school district, is one at least 2,600 public school district employees in Florida who are sending their children to private schools this year using school choice scholarships. Harding said she secured a choice scholarship for her daughter, Janelle, because she wanted a Christian education for Janelle and a school that would challenge her academically.
Many public school districts oppose private school choice, but in Florida, one of the most choice-rich states in America, many of their employees embrace it.
This school year, at least 2,600 public school district employees in Florida are sending their children to private schools using the state’s two main private school choice programs.
We know this because parents who apply for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and Family Empowerment Scholarship for low- and middle-income families list employers on scholarship applications. This year, the two programs are serving roughly 155,000 students.
(The programs are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. And huge thanks to Benjamin Pax in the Step Up information technology department for compiling the spread sheets that allowed me to sort by employer.)
Enrollment alone doesn’t capture the full extent of demand.
By my count, 3,866 district employees applied for the scholarships. Some were ineligible. Others chose not to use them. But the fact that they applied shows an appreciation for these options.
Employer information isn’t available for parents using Florida’s other K-12 scholarships. If it was, we’d see even higher numbers. At last count, the McKay Scholarship for students with disabilities was serving 25,832 students this year. Meanwhile, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for students with unique abilities – formerly known as the Gardiner Scholarship – is serving 23,720 students.
(This year, the McKay Scholarship will be merged into the Family Empowerment Scholarship.)
We don’t have information about job titles. The means-tested scholarships historically were limited to low-income families, and for many years the average scholarship family’s income hovered around $25,000 a year.
With higher income thresholds now in place, it’s likely higher-paid district employees, including teachers, are a bigger part of the scholarship parent mix. (Average annual income for scholarship families this year is $37,939.)
Several surveys and analyses over the years have found public school teachers are more likely than the general public to enroll their children in private schools. (See here, here, here.)
In Florida, public school teachers who use private school choice are not hard to find. One of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship parents who intervened in the 2014 lawsuit that sought to kill that scholarship program was a district teacher and union member. Last summer, a district teacher/scholarship parent joined Gov. Ron DeSantis when he signed legislation expanding the scholarship programs.
The fact that public school employees use private school choice is not necessarily a knock on districts. There are endless reasons why parents want options for their children.
Some district employees using scholarships are critical of public schools in general and/or their employers specifically. Others are complimentary.
Marie Echevarria and her son, Eddie Joe, at the 2021 signing ceremony for HB 7045, which expanded scholarship eligibility to more Florida families.
One teacher, a 22-year veteran in one of Florida’s biggest districts, said her district has “an excellent school system.” But she secured choice scholarships for her children because she wanted a Christian education for them. It’s “best for them, and best for us as a family,” she said. “It teaches them the values they need to live on an everyday basis.”
Marie Echevarria, the Orange County teacher who spoke at DeSantis’s bill signing, had similar reasons for securing a scholarship. She said in a reimaginED podcast that she chose a school for her son that was “very welcoming, very life-involving, very family-caring” and that reflected her and her son’s faith.
“As both a public school teacher and a parent,” she said at the bill signing, “I know that even the best schools may not be the right fit for every child.”
Patrice Harding, a Head Start teacher in the Polk County district, said she got a choice scholarship for her second grader, Janelle, because she wanted a Christian education and then some. “I need her to be in a school that’s going to challenge her,” she said.
Harding said many teachers in her district use choice scholarships. The only push back she got, she said, was from a fellow teacher whose child attends a charter school.
Interestingly, nearly 300 parents using means-tested scholarships this year work for public schools other than district schools. That includes 240 who work for charter schools and 38 who work for Florida Virtual School.
That’s not necessarily a knock on those schools, either.
It’s just more evidence that just about everybody wants options for their kids.
Thanks to state-supported school choice scholarships – and to parents’ desire for academic rigor – new private schools like Treasure Coast Classical Academy in Stuart, Florida, are cropping up, and existing ones continue to grow.
Florida’s largest nonprofit scholarship administrator is celebrating its 20th anniversary of providing families more options in their children’s education.
Step Up For Students, a 501c3 nonprofit based in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg, has awarded more than 1 million scholarships since it was founded in 2002. Today, Step Up administers five of the state’s K-12 scholarship programs: the donor-supported Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the taxpayer-funded Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options for low- and middle-income students; the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (formerly Gardiner); the Reading Scholarship for public school students in grades 3-5 with low reading test scores; and the Hope Scholarship for bullied students.
Step Up currently serves more than 170,000 students, most of them lower-income or with special needs. The scholarships empower their families to access the learning options that work best for their children so they can maximize their potential.
“As I reflect upon the last 20 years, I want to thank all the legislators, educators and donors who made this program and this movement possible,” said John Kirtley, chairman and founder of Step Up for Students. “As important, I want to thank the families who were empowered by the scholarships to give their students the chance to find an educational environment that best suited their individual needs.”
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In the first in a series of conversations about education-related outcomes of the 2022 Florida legislative session, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie hosted Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill and chief operating officer Gina Lynch in a discussion about the surge in applications since the passage of last year’s landmark education choice bill; challenges with implementing the legislation; and improvement opportunities that can further benefit families and schools.
Tuthill and Lynch discussed how 2021’s HB 7045 changed the state’s education choice landscape by consolidating the Gardiner Scholarship program and folding it into the Family Empowerment Scholarship, resulting in a 16% enrollment increase for the income-based scholarship and a 37% increase for the unique abilities scholarship.
"Imagine having a child with (unique needs) ... You're fighting to find the best place for your child … but because of an arbitrary cap, your child is left behind. That seems unconscionable; we should be committed ... to making sure every family has equal opportunity to meet their children's needs."
EPISODE DETAILS:
Denim Edwards, pictured here as he signs a national letter of intent to attend the U.S. Naval Academy as mom Michelle Witherspoon watches, is one of thousands of Florida students who attends a private school with assistance from a scholarship managed by Step Up For Students.
For the seventh year in a row, the Florida Auditor General reported no major findings in its annual operational audit of Step Up For Students, the nonprofit scholarship funding organization that administers scholarships for low-income students, bullied students, and those with special needs.
The 2020-21 operational audit examined the period between March 2020 and February 2021, which covers both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
During this period, Step Up For Students paid $610.1 million in Florida Tax Credit Scholarships (FTC); $338.9 million for the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES); $134 million for the Gardiner Scholarship; $2.5 million for the Hope Scholarship; and $2.1 million for the Reading Scholarship.
Funds for the FTC and Hope Scholarship were raised through private contributions, while funds for the FES, Gardiner and Reading programs were funded through state appropriations.
As with past audits, student accounts were randomly selected to determine if Step Up For Students followed administrative rules regarding student eligibility. Payments from the Reading Scholarship and Gardiner Scholarship also were examined to determine if reimbursements were eligible under the law. Auditors did not report any errors regarding student or reimbursement eligibility.
Auditors questioned staff access to sensitive personal information that Step Up For Students collects to determine student eligibility, but the report did not note any instances of unauthorized disclosure of this information.
In its reply to the auditor general’s office, the organization replied that students often return to the program, and staff members who review scholarship applications for student eligibility must have access to historical data. Step Up For Students stated that it is working on an upgrade to the application database that will limit the number of staff members who can review historical data.
Prior to the audit, Step Up for Students had implemented a new policy to reduce sensitive historical data. Auditors verified that the organization had deleted all documents submitted during the scholarship application process through the 2014-15 school year.
Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (income-based scholarships):
Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities:
Hope Scholarship:
Reading Scholarship:
Around the state: A Broward County man has been arrested and charged with trying to extort money from a prominent state senator over explicit photos, Hillsborough schools' chief financial officer is working on a plan that she said would save $100 million for the financially distressed district, face masks are now fully optional in Leon County schools, a 13-year-old Brevard student is in critical condition after being hit by a car as he tried to cross a road to get to his school bus, a Lee school district report shows that most of its overcrowded schools are in the eastern part of the county, and the University of Miami has agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit brought by its current and past employees over the school's retirement plan. Here are details about those stories and others from the state’s districts, private schools, and colleges and universities:
Miami-Dade: School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is being knighted by Spain for the district's expansion of Spanish-language programs. He'll be admitted Dec. 13 into the Order of Isabella the Catholic, joining others whose work contributes to Spain and its culture. Carvalho, who was born and raised in Portugal, said, "I am deeply humbled by this recognition for it acknowledges our ongoing commitment to expanding access to dual language programs across our community." Associated Press. WTVJ. The school district is partnering with several health organizations to offer vaccination clinics for children 5-11 at various schools this month. WTVJ.
Broward: A 19-year-old Plantation man has been arrested and accused of trying to extort state Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, a sexual abuser survivor, noted advocate for child victims of abuse and the Democrats' leader in the Senate, over explicit photos. Jeremy Kamperveen allegedly made a deal with an undercover agent he thought was Book to turn over the photos in exchange for $4,000. Book said many of the photos were fake, but she recognized some showing her breasts as pictures "she had taken of herself and only shared with a close friend." Sun Sentinel. Miami Herald. Florida Politics. Politico Florida. A 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student has been arrested and accused of making social media threats against the school. The arrest comes two days after four people died in a school shooting in Michigan, and nearly four years after 17 students and employees died in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas. Sun Sentinel. Miami Herald. WTVJ. WPLG. WSVN. WFOR.
Hillsborough: The school district's chief financial officer has outlined a financial plan that could add about $100 million to the district's bottom line. Romaneir Johnson told a citizens financial advisory committee this week that $30 million can be saved by leaving some of the district's 1,000 job vacancies open, $35 million by revising capital spending, that $28 million can be added from the state through higher enrollment, and that $10 million in federal grant money can be tapped. Johnson said she would continue revising the plan before taking it to the school board in February. Tampa Bay Times.
Palm Beach: A 39-year-old Miami man has been arrested and charged with murder in the Nov. 16 stabbing death of Ryan Rogers, a 14-year-old Dwyer High School student. Palm Beach Gardens Police Chief Clint Shannon said suspect Semmie Lee Williams, 39, is a "homeless drifter." Shannon called the death an "innocent child victim having a chance encounter with a very violent criminal." Palm Beach Post. WPTV. WPEC. Miami Herald.
Lee: Newly released school district data shows that dozens of schools are overcrowded, and a majority of them are on the east side of the county. Sixteen of the 28 schools at or above enrollment capacity are in the east zone, including seven of the 10 most crowded schools. School board member Gwynetta Gittens is pushing the district to use the data when making decisions about which schools to help and where to build schools. WINK.
Brevard: A 13-year-old Southwest Middle School student is in critical condition after being hit by a car as he was crossing a road in Palm Bay to get to his school bus on Thursday. Authorities said the bus was stopped with all warning signals activated, but the driver went around the bus and struck the boy. Florida Today. WESH.
Sarasota: Wilma Hamilton Delp, a longtime teacher and principal who was the school district's superintendent from 2000-2003, died this week at the age of 71. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Leon: Face masks are now fully optional in district schools, with no parental opt-out forms needed, school officials announced Thursday. "Beginning today, face masks or any other facial coverings will be optional for students and adults on Leon County school campuses," said assistant superintendent Alan Cox. Only three coronavirus cases have been reported in schools in the past 14 days, and the county's positivity rate has fallen to 2.73 percent. Tallahassee Democrat.
Okeechobee: A student at Seminole Elementary School brought a pellet gun to school this week, but school resource officers were tipped off and confiscated it. WPEC.
Colleges and universities: The University of Miami has agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit brought by its current and past employees who contended the school's retirement plan has exorbitant fees and poorly performing investment options. Miami Herald. The University of Central Florida faculty said the school is "sitting on" $112 million in federal coronavirus relief aid that could be used to help slow the loss of faculty members. News Service of Florida. WMFE. The St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens has created the Benjamin L. Crump Center for Social Justice, named for the prominent civil rights attorney who has represented victims of police brutality and vigilante violence. Associated Press. Miami Herald. A small satellite camera built by a team of 24 students and three faculty members at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will be on board and film the scheduled Intuitive Machines' lunar landing next March. Daytona Beach News-Journal.
In the Legislature: Bills have been introduced in 37 state legislatures, including Florida's, to require schools to provide free feminine hygiene products to students. "Schools should realize that (menstruation) isn't a choice," argues Margaret Schedler, who is a junior at a private college prep school in Birmingham, Ala. "And if they want to support menstruating citizens, they should do the bare minimum and make sure that public- and state-funded places have period products that people can use." NPR. A group of east Tampa students traveled to Tallahassee this week to lobby legislators to invest in making their communities safer and providing their resources to help them and their schools. Florida Politics.
Carrie Meek, choice advocate: Much has been written about Carrie Meek, the former Florida lawmaker and one of the first black Floridians elected to Congress since Reconstruction, since her death last week. But what most news coverage overlooked was that Meek was an strong supporter of school choice. She started the Carrie Meek Foundation, which was among the state's first school choice funding organizations to administer the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program. It and two others later became part of Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. "Congresswoman Meek had a deep and sincere concern for the less fortunate, especially for those in her district who struggled to overcome poverty," said SUFS chairman John F. Kirtley. "She was unconcerned with what any party or politician would say about her supporting an educational choice program." reimaginED.
Around the nation: Staffing shortages are two to three times higher at schools with a high percentage of low-income students than at more affluent ones, suggests research from the University of Washington. K-12 Dive.
Opinions on schools: For critics of school choice, the apocalypse has always been now. School choice supporters are still waiting. Today, Florida ranks No. 3 in the nation in K-12 achievement, improving as the number of private school choice students expanded from 57 in 1999 to more than 175,000 today. Hardly an indication that the end of public education as we know it is near. Patrick R. Gibbons, reimaginED. From mask mandates to the teaching of race, public schools have turned into a political battleground. Florida lawmakers now want to inject even more partisan antics into school board elections, a cynical proposal disguised as an attempt at transparency. Miami Herald. If University of Florida president Kent Fuchs wants to prevent UF’s reputation from being further tattered, he needs to go beyond the task force’s recommendations and take additional steps to shield faculty from political interference. Gainesville Sun. I did not have a Florida Prepaid Plan, but I sure wish I did. And I want the same for all of my current, future and former students. Florida teacher of the year Sarah Ann Painter, Tampa Bay Times.
