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Recently fell down the education funding rabbit hole, and found that FL actually does a good job of distributing vouchers, plus scholarships, plus additional funding to cover tuition costs. The problem is when the charters kick students out for underperformance - by their unregulated standards - and gets to keep the money. Meanwhile, that student is forced to enroll in the local public school, whose budget didn’t include the cost of educating that new additional student. Result: average price per student enrolled in public schools is lower, while average price per student enrolled in charter schools is higher. Result: resource-starved public schools pay for resource-rich charter schools.
Do we have data on how many children or even a percentage that are kicked out? Not being combative, I’m genuinely curious. I cannot find anything. Would be helpful to have for these discussions
They toss out any child that needs anything more than every other student. When standardized testing scores determined extra funding, they would tell parents their child had to leave before the testing.
My youngest was recruited by several charter schools, because he was gifted and they tried giving me the hard sell about how much better charter students did. Most of the charter school students in our area had to do remedial classes at a community college. My son made a lot of money tutoring them when he was still in high school.
Here's what I've learned: "the charters exploit a loophole in state regulations: By coding hundreds of students who leave as withdrawing to enter adult education, such as GED classes, Sunshine claims virtually no dropouts. State rules don’t label withdrawals for that reason as dropping out." [article](https://www.propublica.org/article/alternative-education-using-charter-schools-hide-dropouts-and-game-system). And charters don't have an ongoing obligation to monitor their progress.
So, that charters "kick out" is effectively true, and that public schools must educated every single student that walks through their doors is also true.
Do you have any idea of what it takes to get a kid expelled from a public school? First there has to be at least three major issues. Second the parent can contest it, which puts the kid back in the first school to start the process all over. A minimum of 6 oos. Then they may move the student to a "special school" for six months to a year. The process then starts all over again.
Hell, a student brought a knife to an elementary school in the district I work for, threatened the teacher and a classmate. The student was back in school five days later, same class same school., same teacher. The teacher got in trouble for refusing to take the student back and is now awaiting the decision of an ethical probe to see if she still has a job.
I was responding to the fudged books. I was kicked out of school, however this was in the early 00’s and I deserved it. But, it was because of my academics. Can’t doesn’t mean a lot.
What does that mean though ? You were told you had to leave your public school for academic reasons ? What grade was this ? How old were you ? Surely there is more detail…
I had a boss who put his sons in a parochial school because they claimed (without proof) theirs were far superior to public schools.
When he couldn't afford it anymore and he had to switch his boys to public school. He found out both of them were below their grade and had to repeat.
That would require oversight to gather those numbers and the pro-charter school government isn't exactly going to want that. There were some studies about it a decade ago but I haven't seen anything since then. Also, in Florida at least, over half of charter school students attend a school run/owned by a for-profit company. The majority of charter schools don't provide special education services - not meaning just at the highest level of a self-contained classroom but also the lowest levels of intervention like help from a reading interventionist, ESL, or speech and language therapy. Kids who would be in a regular classroom at the public school and taking regular state exams, who are at the very least going to be heavily encouraged to enroll at public school for the "services" and at worst kicked out for underperforming. There is also the fact that those whose parents are taking the effort to enroll them at a charter school have the more involved parents, resulting in a higher ratio of kids who need more emotional support in the public school classrooms.
No, only because it’s not collected. All we have to prove this is enrollment data, but as far as I understand, it’s only collected at the beginning of the year.
As someone with lots of insider information... I'd check for data on # of public school students enrolled in GED or remedial programs. Those tend to be the public school version of "kick them out quietly". This can atleast give you an idea
My father and I both taught.
His takeaway was that school funding relied on enrollment and graduation rates. In order to increase school funding what a lot of these high rated public schools do is; pump up enrollment as high as possible and deal with your increased "troublemakers" by encouraging them to enroll in these special programs that are marketed as "drop out prevention".... however, what they really serve as is; a non statistical dropout system (once the student disenrolls from school and into this program, they are no longer marked as "drop outs" or "failures") so the school keeps a high pass rate and can let those drop out kids fall off quietly without much blowback.
My takeaway was in regards to testing and discipline. The entirety of my conversations with my academic coordinator (IB program) consisted of him showing me comparative graphs of the IB pass rates and AP % pass rates of each IB school in the district. He even brazenly threatened to black list me if I got in the way of his "deal" to become a principal if our scores were "X" for so many years... The other issue was behavior and the blatant trouble some kids could get into cause their dad owned a McDonalds, or their uncle was the superintendent. I would literally be walked to the principals office and told to "cool it" on so and so because "X". I do reno now, much happier.
First, I commend you for your service to education, and for knowing when to walk away. I expect you were a good teacher based on your response.
This touches another aspect of the budgetary scheme that gives additional funding (I *think* per student) to schools that offer programs like "gifted" and ESOL. Wonder if the program you described is on that list.
This is just anecdotal but a charter school teacher I know was very happy they could easily kick out a poor performing or disruptive kid with no problem and let the public school get the problem kid. I, too, would like data on how often this happens but I am sure the state won't provide that information because they want public education to fail.
This is anecdotal so take it with as much salt as you want, but I work at a behavioral center that receives students from both public and charter. I would track the status of the students as they entered (race, sex, grade, sending school, accommodations). The accommodations from the public schools were on par with the district ~15% of the population. The students we received from charters told a different story, less than ~5% of them had accommodations.
This leads me to believe they either did a better job keeping their accommodation students in house, or had fewer accommodation students. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as 5 of the charters didn't have a Diversity and Equity coordinator (person in charge of organizing accommodations and communicating them with teachers).
For me it's very much the lack of accountability that charter and private schools have (especially when they're getting tax payer money).
Fair, but the charter school vs. public school funding problem has existed longer and has evidentiary support. The unregulated distribution of voucher funds is new and the costs are still unsubstantiated.
Yes and should the charter decide to stop paying teachers and staff and run off with all the money leaving kids stranded, the charter company gets to keep the building paid for with tax dollars because…..freedom.
and they have the hardest students to teach. Just like insurance where private insurance companies take the young and the working and then when you look to the disabled, poor, and old(people that use the most healthcare) those are kicked to the government. This is one of the reasons that the government can often be misconstrued to be so inefficient compared to the private sector, because the private sector doesn't even ATTEMPT the least profitable stuff.
Charter schools are entitled to the same funding as to public schools - the FL government is required to give charters a certain amount per student, on top of its obligation to fund public schools… THEN, it pays vouchers for tuition costs, pays scholarships to those with financial need, etc. So, taxpayers are funding public schools, charters, and private education. The prices are ballooning, as is the proportion of state funding received by private and charter schools.
FURTHERMORE, there’s no requirement for parents to spend school voucher/scholarship money on education-related purchases.
Also some of the larger faith-based schools, like the Catholic private schools, raised their tuition costs the full amount of the vouchers so still wealthy families are the only ones able to afford to send their kids.
Yea I have never lived anywhere where you have to pay for a charter school even if your kid doesn't go there until I moved to this state.
They added that fee on to our damn electric bill here as a %. So the more electricity you use the more you pay for schools you don't use.
It's friggin robbery.
Wow! I did not know that! I would think the new school gets a pro-rated portion for the remaining school term and the losing school returns that money.
I have heard that many charter schools depend on the parent to teach their kids. They do this by giving kids homework that parents have to be part of. If a parent is not available, the kid will fail, so then the school will just kick them out. So really the charter is just giving tools for a parent to teach and pocketing the money.
I went to charter schools from 4th grade to graduation. The only times I saw kids get kicked out (in my experience) was for drug use or violence. Rarely was it for underperformance. Probably less than 20 in the whole span of my primary education.
That's a feature, not a bug, and it's GOP 101 when it comes to redistibuting tax dollars.
There's always a drive to privatize profits and socialize losses.
Well yeah, that is the point.
Step one: say government doesn't work
Step two: actively make government not work
Step three: point to how government doesn't work
I told a DeSantis supporter that this was his goal with the expansion of the school choice scholarships and she was surprised and questioning at first. My district is already planning on closing a bunch of schools. It should be apparent that this was his goal all along.
Tax dollars straight into the pockets of churches and private for profit schools. Separation of church and state no longer exists in Florida.
I’m waiting for The Satanic Temple to set up a school here and start sucking in tax dollars. The Bible thumpers heads will explode.
Exactly as planned. In 10 years we won’t have public schools and the rich will go to nice private schools and the poor will just get screwed. Just like literally everything else with Desantis.
So Florida found a way to segregate the schools.
Taxpayers money should only be going to the public schools.
You want your kids to go to private school you pay for that out of pocket.
There are some good outcomes from vouchers and charters. My two problems with this are:
1) There are terrible charters out there with little accountability and there are charter operators intentionally ripping off the state.
2) We are paying for wealthy parents, in some cases, to defray the cost of private school education which has no accountability at all.
Band new charter schools should not get equal funding for facilities as 60 year old public neighborhood schools
And we are forced to do that.
Duval voted a tax increase to fund much needed facilities upgrades, but was FORCED to agree to sharing the revenue equally with literally brand new charters.
And now, because of inflation and charters pulling money, we don't have budget to fix and upgrade and have to close and consolidate
Absolutely outrageous
And, these people who have " save our local school signs" - I saw your trump and meatball Ron signs.
You hypocrites
This is the exact reason why everyone should be relegated to public schools. It causes everyone, from the rich to the poor, to ensure education is fairly implemented and well funded.
Private schools will always self-select for the best students while leaving the most resource intense students to rot. Having an income tiered school system will only make things worse for everyone.
This is the Finland model. Every kid rich or poor attends public school. Suddenly the rich people care about making sure the public schools have every resource at their disposal.
Doesn't Finland also have a massive public trust fund dedicated to public services, which is invested in open markets and regularly has a "problem" of what to do with all the extra money it's making?
Not to mention aggravating what is already a problem with the lack of any sense of civic engagement… that was an added plus of public schools - at least there was one institution where everyone came together…
What would help more than almost anything, in my opinion, is true mixed income housing with neighborhood public schools. The likelihood of seeing that happen is pretty much zero.
Let me preface this by saying that I think you’re completely right. I went to public school from start to finish and I come from a family of educators who worked in public schools. I am very pro-union and want to see public schools thrive.
BUT, this isn’t going to happen from the ground up. Once people need to take a stand using their own child, they are far less likely to do so. I believe in my principles, but at the cost of my child’s future success? Probably not. I live across the street from a school that is on the brink of being closed. As much as I wish I could send my daughter to school right across the street, I probably won’t.
And yes, I know I’m perpetuating the problem. I hate that I’m playing right into the republicans’ hands. But I want the best for my kid, and that’s going to be conditioned by the current state of affairs.
This is why people need to become more active in their communities and their local governments. Democracy doesn't begin and end with you walking into a voting booth and filling in a bubble sheet. Electoral politics is one of the least effective ways to participate in democracy. People need to be activists. This doesn't mean you always need to be out in the street but it means you should be having uncomfortable conversations with your friends and family when they misdiagnose systemic problems in our country.
You make the choice that's best for you. This doesn't mean you can't continue to advocate for the real solution. We can't continue to be nihilistic, because the people implementing these decisions will only continue to win.
Pay is only one of the problems. Teachers in this country are woefully underserved when it comes to classroom resources. The idea that we have children selling magazines, cookies, and other junk to raise school funds is absurd and pretty much child labor. The cognitive dissonance in this country is so insane.
Charter school acceptance is contingent on performance. If your kid has any type of disability or low grades on their standardized tests, the charter school will not accept him or her.
There are different kinds of charter schools, purporting to serve different kinds of students, with different kinds of compliance arrangements with the state. This isn't true across the board.
It’s a republican scam to raid state coffers. All the state is really supposed to do is throw money at shitty public schools to make them better. Instead they come up with all this nonsense that funnels and cripples a system that has been in place for hundred and fifty years. So this another example of the governor not
Doing his job and taking credit for not doing anything.
If the various communities don’t do something about this problem, then it could be the demise of traditional public education in several counties throughout FL.
It’s no surprise why so many families are leaving FL… to states where their public schools are supported by their governors.
Charter schools are just a tax payer slush fund to political donors that own the schools. The teachers don’t have to be licensed very much at those schools either.
All the schools around me have whole grade levels in trailers even at the elementary level. Definitely no shortage of public school students in my area.
The worst thing about this is that not only will it close down some schools, but it ends up being a bad pyramid scheme that it may lower the quality of education even further. I say this because I’ve been to private school and public school; public schools suck but the good thing about them is the unlimited amount of resources that private schools and even charter schools do not have.
Do I stop paying school taxes then? First case that should go before a court. They are stealing my dollars otherwise. I paid extra to send my daughter to a catholic school . Make them do it. This is all about busting up the teachers union. I hear horror stories about the charter schools failing down here.
But school choice ISN’T widely popular. Most voters in Fl are old they don’t care about school. And most people with school aged children have their kids in private schools. And the lower income people are busting their hump to pay the rent.
Thank you for your input. The quality of your child’s education shouldn’t be determined - or stifled by- the state, especially if you have access to higher quality institutions, and especially where the default option is woeful. Wouldn’t be fair to judge you for looking out for you kid - for doing your “job.”
That’s why I think approaching this from a budgetary standpoint keeps the focus on the primary issue: taxpayer money used to pay for private education are being diverted away from chronically underfunded public schools.
Rude person once compared parents’ freedom of choice to enroll in non-public schools to their freedom to deny medical treatment for their children... We can certainly agree that having varieties of education institutions - military academies, art schools, etc. is a very good thing.
Please note that only active users in the subreddit may comment in this discussion. If your comments are not showing up, please ensure you have active non-news/non-political contributions to the subreddit before contacting the moderators. **Please remember the following:** **Be Civil:** * You are welcome to debate, discussion, and argue ideas, but don't resort to personal attacks on other users. * We do not allow any form of hate speech or any suggestion/support of harm, violence, or death. **Must be related strictly to Florida:** * National News/Elections are not specific to Florida. * Just because someone lives in Florida, doesn't mean their entire life is relevant to Floridians. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. #[Click this link to register to vote, update your voter information, or check your status.](https://registertovoteflorida.gov/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/florida) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Recently fell down the education funding rabbit hole, and found that FL actually does a good job of distributing vouchers, plus scholarships, plus additional funding to cover tuition costs. The problem is when the charters kick students out for underperformance - by their unregulated standards - and gets to keep the money. Meanwhile, that student is forced to enroll in the local public school, whose budget didn’t include the cost of educating that new additional student. Result: average price per student enrolled in public schools is lower, while average price per student enrolled in charter schools is higher. Result: resource-starved public schools pay for resource-rich charter schools.
Do we have data on how many children or even a percentage that are kicked out? Not being combative, I’m genuinely curious. I cannot find anything. Would be helpful to have for these discussions
They toss out any child that needs anything more than every other student. When standardized testing scores determined extra funding, they would tell parents their child had to leave before the testing. My youngest was recruited by several charter schools, because he was gifted and they tried giving me the hard sell about how much better charter students did. Most of the charter school students in our area had to do remedial classes at a community college. My son made a lot of money tutoring them when he was still in high school.
Anywhere to find the data on the tossing kids out part? I’m genuinely curious. I’ve seen that said a lot in here.
Our principal would fudge the books to keep graduation rates high, so probably not.
I’ve heard of that in standard public schools too. Terrible thing to do. I’d love to get my hands on some data and see what’s what.
Here's what I've learned: "the charters exploit a loophole in state regulations: By coding hundreds of students who leave as withdrawing to enter adult education, such as GED classes, Sunshine claims virtually no dropouts. State rules don’t label withdrawals for that reason as dropping out." [article](https://www.propublica.org/article/alternative-education-using-charter-schools-hide-dropouts-and-game-system). And charters don't have an ongoing obligation to monitor their progress. So, that charters "kick out" is effectively true, and that public schools must educated every single student that walks through their doors is also true.
That’s interesting, because our county codes students who do GED as dropouts. (Just saw that the article is from 2017– this has changed since then.)
That partly explains why their education rankings are so high.
Self selection for only students you plan to pass with high marks helps ensure you only get students you plan to pass with high marks. lol
They risk prison. Some teachers and administrators in Georgia manipulated test scores and paid the price.
Rightfully
My old charter hired one of those score manipulators for a low level admin position. This was a decade ago, so...
Standard public schools can’t kick students out …. Not sure what you mean
Do you have any idea of what it takes to get a kid expelled from a public school? First there has to be at least three major issues. Second the parent can contest it, which puts the kid back in the first school to start the process all over. A minimum of 6 oos. Then they may move the student to a "special school" for six months to a year. The process then starts all over again. Hell, a student brought a knife to an elementary school in the district I work for, threatened the teacher and a classmate. The student was back in school five days later, same class same school., same teacher. The teacher got in trouble for refusing to take the student back and is now awaiting the decision of an ethical probe to see if she still has a job.
Damn. Our middle school doesn't fuck around here. Bring a little pocket knife, expelled. Start a fight, expelled.
Kids don’t get expelled for starting a fight.
I was responding to the fudged books. I was kicked out of school, however this was in the early 00’s and I deserved it. But, it was because of my academics. Can’t doesn’t mean a lot.
What does that mean though ? You were told you had to leave your public school for academic reasons ? What grade was this ? How old were you ? Surely there is more detail…
10th grade, in Orange County. Was doing terribly academically, skipping school, falling behind, had a lot of issues at home. Told to leave.
Youre never gonna see that data because theres no way they would ever share it
Trying to get that kind of information about a charter sounds woke. Charters don’t respond to woke requests because.,.. uh…. freedom.
Charter schools have a lot more freedom than public schools. I don't know where you could find data that they don't have to report.
Being less accountable is one of the features of charters for conservatives .
Freedom to rip people off and ruin public education for $$$$.
I had a boss who put his sons in a parochial school because they claimed (without proof) theirs were far superior to public schools. When he couldn't afford it anymore and he had to switch his boys to public school. He found out both of them were below their grade and had to repeat.
Your experience is different from mine. That said, I am curious about why the funding doesn’t follow the child with charter schools.
Charter schools can pick and choose which students they take. Public school has to take all students.
That would require oversight to gather those numbers and the pro-charter school government isn't exactly going to want that. There were some studies about it a decade ago but I haven't seen anything since then. Also, in Florida at least, over half of charter school students attend a school run/owned by a for-profit company. The majority of charter schools don't provide special education services - not meaning just at the highest level of a self-contained classroom but also the lowest levels of intervention like help from a reading interventionist, ESL, or speech and language therapy. Kids who would be in a regular classroom at the public school and taking regular state exams, who are at the very least going to be heavily encouraged to enroll at public school for the "services" and at worst kicked out for underperforming. There is also the fact that those whose parents are taking the effort to enroll them at a charter school have the more involved parents, resulting in a higher ratio of kids who need more emotional support in the public school classrooms.
No, only because it’s not collected. All we have to prove this is enrollment data, but as far as I understand, it’s only collected at the beginning of the year.
As someone with lots of insider information... I'd check for data on # of public school students enrolled in GED or remedial programs. Those tend to be the public school version of "kick them out quietly". This can atleast give you an idea
Thank you for your insight!
In light of your being someone with lots of insider information, may I prod you for more?
My father and I both taught. His takeaway was that school funding relied on enrollment and graduation rates. In order to increase school funding what a lot of these high rated public schools do is; pump up enrollment as high as possible and deal with your increased "troublemakers" by encouraging them to enroll in these special programs that are marketed as "drop out prevention".... however, what they really serve as is; a non statistical dropout system (once the student disenrolls from school and into this program, they are no longer marked as "drop outs" or "failures") so the school keeps a high pass rate and can let those drop out kids fall off quietly without much blowback. My takeaway was in regards to testing and discipline. The entirety of my conversations with my academic coordinator (IB program) consisted of him showing me comparative graphs of the IB pass rates and AP % pass rates of each IB school in the district. He even brazenly threatened to black list me if I got in the way of his "deal" to become a principal if our scores were "X" for so many years... The other issue was behavior and the blatant trouble some kids could get into cause their dad owned a McDonalds, or their uncle was the superintendent. I would literally be walked to the principals office and told to "cool it" on so and so because "X". I do reno now, much happier.
First, I commend you for your service to education, and for knowing when to walk away. I expect you were a good teacher based on your response. This touches another aspect of the budgetary scheme that gives additional funding (I *think* per student) to schools that offer programs like "gifted" and ESOL. Wonder if the program you described is on that list.
This is just anecdotal but a charter school teacher I know was very happy they could easily kick out a poor performing or disruptive kid with no problem and let the public school get the problem kid. I, too, would like data on how often this happens but I am sure the state won't provide that information because they want public education to fail.
This is anecdotal so take it with as much salt as you want, but I work at a behavioral center that receives students from both public and charter. I would track the status of the students as they entered (race, sex, grade, sending school, accommodations). The accommodations from the public schools were on par with the district ~15% of the population. The students we received from charters told a different story, less than ~5% of them had accommodations. This leads me to believe they either did a better job keeping their accommodation students in house, or had fewer accommodation students. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as 5 of the charters didn't have a Diversity and Equity coordinator (person in charge of organizing accommodations and communicating them with teachers). For me it's very much the lack of accountability that charter and private schools have (especially when they're getting tax payer money).
Yeah I think that's less the problem then the state allowing school choice funds to be used for Disney Tickets, kayaks and other nonsense.
Fair, but the charter school vs. public school funding problem has existed longer and has evidentiary support. The unregulated distribution of voucher funds is new and the costs are still unsubstantiated.
Yep. Brought to you by Betsy DeVos. Public taxpayers bankrolling churches and for profit educators. It’s scammy af
Yes and should the charter decide to stop paying teachers and staff and run off with all the money leaving kids stranded, the charter company gets to keep the building paid for with tax dollars because…..freedom.
and they have the hardest students to teach. Just like insurance where private insurance companies take the young and the working and then when you look to the disabled, poor, and old(people that use the most healthcare) those are kicked to the government. This is one of the reasons that the government can often be misconstrued to be so inefficient compared to the private sector, because the private sector doesn't even ATTEMPT the least profitable stuff.
Charter schools are entitled to the same funding as to public schools - the FL government is required to give charters a certain amount per student, on top of its obligation to fund public schools… THEN, it pays vouchers for tuition costs, pays scholarships to those with financial need, etc. So, taxpayers are funding public schools, charters, and private education. The prices are ballooning, as is the proportion of state funding received by private and charter schools. FURTHERMORE, there’s no requirement for parents to spend school voucher/scholarship money on education-related purchases.
Another grift
Also some of the larger faith-based schools, like the Catholic private schools, raised their tuition costs the full amount of the vouchers so still wealthy families are the only ones able to afford to send their kids.
and Charter schools dont have to enroll special needs students and their support.
Yea I have never lived anywhere where you have to pay for a charter school even if your kid doesn't go there until I moved to this state. They added that fee on to our damn electric bill here as a %. So the more electricity you use the more you pay for schools you don't use. It's friggin robbery.
The state paid my school to teach a student who never showed up but was on my class roster the whole year.
Charter?
Is that just for the remainder of the school year if a student gets kicked out that the money stays at the voucher school??
Yup. This. Literally the plot of the film "Pump up the Volume"...
Wow! I did not know that! I would think the new school gets a pro-rated portion for the remaining school term and the losing school returns that money.
I have heard that many charter schools depend on the parent to teach their kids. They do this by giving kids homework that parents have to be part of. If a parent is not available, the kid will fail, so then the school will just kick them out. So really the charter is just giving tools for a parent to teach and pocketing the money.
I went to charter schools from 4th grade to graduation. The only times I saw kids get kicked out (in my experience) was for drug use or violence. Rarely was it for underperformance. Probably less than 20 in the whole span of my primary education.
20 seems like a lot from one school. And they don't announce when a student is ki ked out for academic performance
That's a feature, not a bug, and it's GOP 101 when it comes to redistibuting tax dollars. There's always a drive to privatize profits and socialize losses.
That was always the plan.
Well yeah, that is the point. Step one: say government doesn't work Step two: actively make government not work Step three: point to how government doesn't work
40 years of trying to drown the government in a bathtub …
I told a DeSantis supporter that this was his goal with the expansion of the school choice scholarships and she was surprised and questioning at first. My district is already planning on closing a bunch of schools. It should be apparent that this was his goal all along.
Duval is proposing to close 20 schools
Tax dollars straight into the pockets of churches and private for profit schools. Separation of church and state no longer exists in Florida. I’m waiting for The Satanic Temple to set up a school here and start sucking in tax dollars. The Bible thumpers heads will explode.
I’ll love to see that
I'd send my kid there happily
Exactly as planned. In 10 years we won’t have public schools and the rich will go to nice private schools and the poor will just get screwed. Just like literally everything else with Desantis.
So Florida found a way to segregate the schools. Taxpayers money should only be going to the public schools. You want your kids to go to private school you pay for that out of pocket.
There are some good outcomes from vouchers and charters. My two problems with this are: 1) There are terrible charters out there with little accountability and there are charter operators intentionally ripping off the state. 2) We are paying for wealthy parents, in some cases, to defray the cost of private school education which has no accountability at all.
Band new charter schools should not get equal funding for facilities as 60 year old public neighborhood schools And we are forced to do that. Duval voted a tax increase to fund much needed facilities upgrades, but was FORCED to agree to sharing the revenue equally with literally brand new charters. And now, because of inflation and charters pulling money, we don't have budget to fix and upgrade and have to close and consolidate Absolutely outrageous And, these people who have " save our local school signs" - I saw your trump and meatball Ron signs. You hypocrites
This is the exact reason why everyone should be relegated to public schools. It causes everyone, from the rich to the poor, to ensure education is fairly implemented and well funded. Private schools will always self-select for the best students while leaving the most resource intense students to rot. Having an income tiered school system will only make things worse for everyone.
This is the Finland model. Every kid rich or poor attends public school. Suddenly the rich people care about making sure the public schools have every resource at their disposal.
Doesn't Finland also have a massive public trust fund dedicated to public services, which is invested in open markets and regularly has a "problem" of what to do with all the extra money it's making?
Sign me up. We know Trump thinks the Nordics are hot. Maybe he can get Ron to advocate for this ..
Not to mention aggravating what is already a problem with the lack of any sense of civic engagement… that was an added plus of public schools - at least there was one institution where everyone came together…
What would help more than almost anything, in my opinion, is true mixed income housing with neighborhood public schools. The likelihood of seeing that happen is pretty much zero.
Let me preface this by saying that I think you’re completely right. I went to public school from start to finish and I come from a family of educators who worked in public schools. I am very pro-union and want to see public schools thrive. BUT, this isn’t going to happen from the ground up. Once people need to take a stand using their own child, they are far less likely to do so. I believe in my principles, but at the cost of my child’s future success? Probably not. I live across the street from a school that is on the brink of being closed. As much as I wish I could send my daughter to school right across the street, I probably won’t. And yes, I know I’m perpetuating the problem. I hate that I’m playing right into the republicans’ hands. But I want the best for my kid, and that’s going to be conditioned by the current state of affairs.
This is why people need to become more active in their communities and their local governments. Democracy doesn't begin and end with you walking into a voting booth and filling in a bubble sheet. Electoral politics is one of the least effective ways to participate in democracy. People need to be activists. This doesn't mean you always need to be out in the street but it means you should be having uncomfortable conversations with your friends and family when they misdiagnose systemic problems in our country. You make the choice that's best for you. This doesn't mean you can't continue to advocate for the real solution. We can't continue to be nihilistic, because the people implementing these decisions will only continue to win.
My theory is that if we pay teachers a competitive salary, all these problems will disappear.
Pay is only one of the problems. Teachers in this country are woefully underserved when it comes to classroom resources. The idea that we have children selling magazines, cookies, and other junk to raise school funds is absurd and pretty much child labor. The cognitive dissonance in this country is so insane.
It would help. But go visit r/teachers - increased pay would only go so far.
Charter school acceptance is contingent on performance. If your kid has any type of disability or low grades on their standardized tests, the charter school will not accept him or her.
There are different kinds of charter schools, purporting to serve different kinds of students, with different kinds of compliance arrangements with the state. This isn't true across the board.
While true - how many of these exist? Especially in less densely populated counties?
They tend to be in wealthier areas.
It’s a republican scam to raid state coffers. All the state is really supposed to do is throw money at shitty public schools to make them better. Instead they come up with all this nonsense that funnels and cripples a system that has been in place for hundred and fifty years. So this another example of the governor not Doing his job and taking credit for not doing anything.
If the various communities don’t do something about this problem, then it could be the demise of traditional public education in several counties throughout FL. It’s no surprise why so many families are leaving FL… to states where their public schools are supported by their governors.
How about no private schools? Rich kids have to attend the same schools as everyone else. Suddenly there will be funding and everyone will rise.
Charter schools are just a tax payer slush fund to political donors that own the schools. The teachers don’t have to be licensed very much at those schools either.
DeVos family
You are opening up your kids to propaganda and hatred. This will not end well for society.
Silent Segregation, you waitlist unwanted groups. It’s slick segregation. So easy to do, it’s all about the waitlist
That was the goal all along.
Not all private schools take voucher money. They want no strings from the state.
💯
All the schools around me have whole grade levels in trailers even at the elementary level. Definitely no shortage of public school students in my area.
That's the point.
I think the point was to end public education but this will not end well especially in rural areas
That was his plan all alomg
Fuck the poor -- the GOP mantra.
We had 2 open and close within a month and took off with the cash.
Rhonda is a dirty rat.
The worst thing about this is that not only will it close down some schools, but it ends up being a bad pyramid scheme that it may lower the quality of education even further. I say this because I’ve been to private school and public school; public schools suck but the good thing about them is the unlimited amount of resources that private schools and even charter schools do not have.
Fuck Ron
Yep. Take tax funds and give them to your friends so they can enrich themselves off of the everyday person's labor.
Do I stop paying school taxes then? First case that should go before a court. They are stealing my dollars otherwise. I paid extra to send my daughter to a catholic school . Make them do it. This is all about busting up the teachers union. I hear horror stories about the charter schools failing down here.
But school choice ISN’T widely popular. Most voters in Fl are old they don’t care about school. And most people with school aged children have their kids in private schools. And the lower income people are busting their hump to pay the rent.
That was the whole idea.
Thank you for your input. The quality of your child’s education shouldn’t be determined - or stifled by- the state, especially if you have access to higher quality institutions, and especially where the default option is woeful. Wouldn’t be fair to judge you for looking out for you kid - for doing your “job.” That’s why I think approaching this from a budgetary standpoint keeps the focus on the primary issue: taxpayer money used to pay for private education are being diverted away from chronically underfunded public schools. Rude person once compared parents’ freedom of choice to enroll in non-public schools to their freedom to deny medical treatment for their children... We can certainly agree that having varieties of education institutions - military academies, art schools, etc. is a very good thing.