Gabrielle Russon
Orange County public schools are losing more than $200 million this school year as the state diverts taxpayer money to private school vouchers, School Board member Stephanie Vanos said.
Meanwhile, those private schools face little transparency and accountability, Vanos and others complained.
“One of the ways that we can make sure our families and our communities understand what is happening in these schools is to pass legislation to make these schools subject to our Sunshine Laws,” Vanos said. “We deserve to know what is happening in these schools that are receiving our money.”
The discussion about Florida’s $4 billion voucher program and school choice took place Wednesday during the League of Women Voters of Orange County’s regular Hot Topic forum.
The event was timely, as Orange County students returned to school this week in the fourth-biggest district in the state.
Beth Kassab, the former Orlando Sentinel editor whose investigative work on private schools once got a shout out on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” played moderator. Joining her included Vanos, a senior policy analyst from the Florida Policy Institute and others.
Annie Martin, a Sentinel investigative reporter, said public schools are required to disclose various pieces of information, such as teacher personnel files, test scores, graduation rates and curriculum details.
“It’s pretty transparent if you want to know what’s going on in your local public school,” Martin said. “When you’re talking about schools that are private, they don’t have to share those things with you.”
“The differences between what you can find out about your public school versus what you can find out about a private school, even one that’s taking millions in public dollars, is pretty stark,” she added.
Martin spoke about the wide range of private schools she visited over the years for her reporting with Kassab, who is now the editor of the Winter Park Voice.
They detailed how some Christian private schools offer nice campuses and employ teachers with college degrees. But some private schools operate in strip malls with no playgrounds or teach students that humans and dinosaurs lived together at the same time.
“We actually even found schools where there were teachers who didn’t have a high school diploma,” Martin said.
With more parents opting for private school, the declining enrollment meant Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) reduced the number of teachers and shrank departments’ budgets by 2%, said Tashanda Brown-Cannon, the OCPS Chief Academic Officer.
The teacher positions cut were often in special areas, such as art or business education, she said.
Since private schools are not legally required to accept all students. That makes the mission of public schools even more important, the public education advocates argued.
Public schools are “the heartbeat of our community,” Brown-Cannon said. “It is the one system where we can ensure that all of our students, regardless of their socio-economical background, their religion, their race, that they receive a high-quality education.”
Brown-Cannon said the story of OCPS also includes about the 45 elementary schools teaching orchestra and about 5,000 high schoolers received college credit through AP classes.
“We have to tell our own story,” she said. “We cannot allow others to tell our story.”
