DeSantis announces new 'equal opportunity' voucher program, aims to end scholarship waiting list, ex

[Baitball Blogger]

DeSantis announces new 'equal opportunity' voucher program, aims to end scholarship waiting list, expand school choice

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday he wants to create a new private school voucher program that would pay tuition for students now on the waiting list for the state’s popular Tax Credit Scholarship Program.

Florida now has four voucher programs, which provide money for public school students to attend private school. The tax credit program is the state’s largest, serving nearly 100,000 students from low-income families. About 14,000 are on its waiting list.

snip

The plan would cost from $90 million to $100 million to offer scholarships to all those on the waiting list, DeSantis said.

The announcement was greeted with loud applause from the crowd of supporters, parents and students gathered with DeSantis at Calvary City Academy in Orlando. The school has nearly 300 students using tax credit scholarships.

But a push for another voucher program quickly met with objections from Florida’s teacher unions and other public school advocates, who dislike that the programs use taxpayer money to send children to private, often religious, schools.

Critics of the voucher programs also note that the private schools don’t have to meet the same requirements as public schools when it comes to teacher qualifications, standardized testing or academic standards. In 2017, the Orland Sentinel published a series that documented how some private schools that take the state scholarships have falsified fire and health inspections, set up shop in run-down facilities and hired teachers with criminal records and without college degrees.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-ne-desantis-school-vouchers-scholarships-20190215-story.html

[PeeJ52]

1. I bet the school administrators and owners are well paid though.

Probably know someone in government too...

[Baitball Blogger]

2. There has to be a way to out the voucher system.

[msongs]

3. must not let the precious be exposed to the children of the mob nt

[radical noodle]

4. Just another way to try to dismantle public schools