Julie Delegal
Jacksonville is ground zero for the public education budget disaster that is the result of 15 years of misguided “reform” in Florida.
Three months ago, Duval Superintendent of Schools Nikolai Vitti introduced an innovative, if short-lived, proposal to allow open enrollment district-wide to keep more students in the public system. His reason? The public school district is losing too much money to privatized alternatives, including private-voucher schools and their public-private cousins, charter schools. Now, those budget woes are coming home to roost.
In news reports in March, Vitti estimated that the district lost about $50 million this year, which could rise to $70 million next year because of all the students lost to school privatization — with no evidence that privatization better serves our students.
Now, funds are running short and school jobs are at risk in Jacksonville — despite Gov. Rick Scott’s insistence that it’s a banner budget year for Florida’s schools.
Faced with shortfalls, Vitti appears to be stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Despite Scott’s claims of restorative money for schools in this year’s budget, the truth is we’re still not up to pre-recessionary standards in terms of per pupil funding. Further, the modest boost that public schools received this year is due more to rebounding property-tax revenue than to any policy preferences by the Legislature.
Who would blame Vitti if he actually started to accept the Band-Aids that philanthropists in Northeast Florida are poised to give him? Here’s the thing about philanthropists and their money, though: strings are attached. Public money, on the other hand, gets spent with the advice and consent of our elected officials — for the most part, as we’ll see below.
With Tallahassee continuing to put the squeeze on public schools, which makes privatize schools more appealing, what’s a Super to do? Take money from privatization champion Gary Chartrand and his millionaire friends? The philanthropy group, Quality Education for All, is offering matching funds so that Duval will hire 300 new Teach for America (TFA) recruits over the next three years.
Critics say that the last thing Jacksonville’s struggling schools need is a slew of novice, short-time teachers. TFA-trained teachers earn their bachelor’s degrees in their chosen subject before taking a five-week summer intensive course for teaching. They are only required to commit to serving two years in the classroom. Leave it to the privatization crowd to solve the teacher-retention crisis by hiring a revolving-door teaching force.
Meanwhile, Florida lawmakers continue to favor, fund, and promote the very thing that our district superintendent says is draining money away from the public schools — privatization. It would be one thing if charter schools and private voucher schools actually did a better job of educating our children, but they don’t. Once the demographic and socio-economic status of students is factored in, traditional public schools — not charter schools — perform better.
Jacksonville’s KIPP school, a charter school that serves students in a disadvantaged neighborhood, may be an exception.
As for private-school voucher students, well, who knows? It appears that lawmakers simply don’t care whether voucher-receiving students — many of them the state’s poorest children — can achieve grade-level proficiency or not. Unlike public school students, who must reach a “finish line” in proficiency to advance to the next grade as measured by standards-based tests, voucher students are merely required to finish wherever they happen to end up, as plotted on a bell curve.
The state is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a program that can’t be verified as better, or even as good, as Florida’s public schools. Despite protests from multiple constituency groups across Florida that urged a veto, Scott signed a voucher expansion that will permit students with household incomes up to $62,000 to use the voucher, which is paid for with diverted corporate tax funds.
But the fault does not lie solely with Tallahassee. Our local school board members need to stand up and say no to ludicrous rules that require them to say yes to each and every charter school that wants to open. The Florida Department of Education says districts can’t deny new charter openings unless there’s evidence of financial mismanagement — a ridiculous mandate that results in unnecessary charter schools opening down the street from A-rated schools in affluent areas of Jacksonville.
We’ll see if the plaintiffs in the “failure-to-fund” educational lawsuit can take on voucher schools and charter schools while they’re at it. The future of public education in Florida may well depend on one judge’s discretion. One thing is for certain: while standards-based accountability may be helping Florida’s schools on some fronts, privatization is not.
Julie Delegal, a University of Florida alumna, is a contributor for Folio Weekly, Jacksonville’s alternative weekly, and writes for the family business, Delegal Law Offices. She lives in Jacksonville. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
