Jeb Bush machine still pushing religious school vouchers via Rubio operatives

[seafan]

Even though the Florida Supreme Court slapped this down as unconstitutional, and we now have a different governor, The Jeb Machine rolls on, unabated.


Jeb Bush aide strives to get vouchers in constitution

By S.V. DÁTE
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau

December 17, 2007

TALLAHASSEE — A year and a half after the state Senate shot down former Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to enshrine school vouchers in the state constitution, his top education aide is trying again through the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.

Patricia Levesque, a commission member who runs Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, is pushing two voucher-related proposals to undo court rulings that found vouchers unconstitutional.

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"I don't think it's our job to be getting into fights with the courts," said commission member Les Miller, a former Democratic state senator from Tampa appointed to the group by Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie. "The Supreme Court has spoken, and they have said it is unconstitutional."

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A draft is complete for one of Levesque's proposals. It would eliminate the state constitution's prohibition against sending state money to religious institutions and would instead explicitly permit the practice. In 2004, the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that Bush's signature Opportunity Scholarship Program for children at failing schools violated that ban because it specifically allowed religious schools to get vouchers.

About three-fourths of the schools in the remaining two voucher programs are religious. A 2003 survey of voucher-taking schools by The Palm Beach Post found that administrators at 60 percent of those responding believed that religion was as important as or more important than academics for their students' parents.

The majority of those schools were of evangelical Christian denominations. The Post found many where religious instruction permeated the curriculum - with some teaching that Jews and other non-Christians were bound for hell.

Language such as that in Levesque's draft would similarly permit state money to go to schools run by those sympathetic to Islamic terrorists - a concern that made the state and the wealthy Tampa investor who largely runs the corporate tax credit voucher program yank money going to a Tampa school co-founded by former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who is in prison for conspiring to help Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

"I think it's very ill-conceived," said Ron Meyer, the teachers union lawyer who successfully led the lawsuit against the failing-school voucher over six years. "It just opens up the state to being in the business of funding all sorts of religious instruction. It would open Pandora's box."

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Levesque was appointed to the commission by House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, who worked with Levesque and Bush to hire in the House many in Bush's staff when he left office.