Florida won’t pay a school to NOT educate a student. I’ll put that another way: the state doesn’t pay for students to not attend a school.
It is a simple and intuitive fact, yet some Floridians – many happen to be parental choice critics – don’t seem to get it.
For 41 years, the Florida Legislature has funded education with a formula based specifically on the cost to educate each student. The just-approved 2014-15 spending plan is no different: It determines the average student will cost $6,937 to educate, multiplies that amount by a projected enrollment of 2,722,134 and arrives at a bottom line of $18.9 billion. Each district is paid accordingly.
Not surprisingly, this means the state won’t pay a school for students educated somewhere else. But look at the responses from Floridians concerned about the newer private options available to lower-income and special needs students:
- Deidre Macnab of the Florida League of Women Voters described the impact of tax-credit scholarships as “defunding our public schools.”
- Margaret Smith, the superintendent of Volusia public schools, says scholarships are “impacting public K-12 education because it diverts money away from K-12 schools.”
- Frank Cerabino, a columnist for the Palm Beach Post, wrote: “Are you in favor of taking tax dollars out of public education to pay for private education alternatives … ?”
(As we always note, the scholarship program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)
Opposing one type of school choice program because it “diverted” money, takes “tax dollars out,” or leaves public schools with “fewer resources” requires critics to ignore the state’s method of funding K-12 education.
If you attend a private school, the state will not pay for you to NOT attend a public school. This is true whether you pay for the private education yourself, or if you use a tax-credit scholarship, or voucher. The same principle holds true if you choose a career academy, charter school, virtual school, International Baccalaureate or magnet program. The district is paid for the cost of you attending the chosen school and receives no compensation for the assigned school where you might have left an empty seat.
If a voucher or tax-credit scholarship “diverts” money from a neighborhood school, so does a charter, or magnet school, or any other option available to students in the 21st century.
Again, and this bears repeating, the state does not pay schools for empty seats.
Yes, when a student chooses something other than his or her assigned neighborhood school, that school is left with fewer aggregate dollars in the budget. This can cause some budgetary difficulty, as districts try to estimate the ebb and flow of students from their schools. But given that statewide enrollment is on the increase again, the issue is surmountable and a budgetary issue that every learning institution faces.
“Diverting” and “defunding” are scary words that evoke emotion, but they are misleading. The money doesn’t belong to a school until a student shows up at the door. So tax-credit scholarships or vouchers or magnet schools don’t divert money; they just help more people CHOOSE a different option. Then the state pays the school that is educating that child. It’s as simple as that.
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