Secret donations, discrimination and lack of accountability sum up Florida’s voucher programs (draft)

Florida’s voucher program is a mess. The schools are allowed to discriminate, they don’t participate in the testing system which Tallahassee uses to bash public ed under the guise of accountability being so important  for public schools and most don’t even have to report how the money their receive is spent. If that wasn’t enough, which companies donates to them and how much is allowed to be kept secret. Think about that, companies are allowed to divert money from the tax rolls and keep the transactions secret as they do so.

Scott Maxwell, left this little nugget on Twitter today.

  

Um, how is this possible.

This is money diverted from the public coffers and the public isn’t allowed to know how much and by who?

Now some people might point to Step up for Students, the main voucher provider annual report, but that’s far from timely as their last published one was from the 17-18 year and where it did have a list of donors, how much they gave is suspiciously absent.

https://www.stepupforstudents.org/wp-content/uploads/SU_AnnualReport17_Final-for-web_lowres.pdf

If this is such a great deal, why all the secrecy?

I think it’s worth noting once again that voucher schools can teach whatever they want, and take and kick out whoever they want for whatever reason, and their teachers don’t have to have certifications, let alone degrees, but for some reason, Tallahassee thinks that is a good deal. Oh what’s the reason? They want to destroy public ed.

Thankfully some companies as they find out they are funding discrimination, have decided to stop. Also from Maxwell’s twitter feed.

Fifth-Third Bank follows Allegiant airlines and Rosen Resorts — the original company that immediately pulled out, saying it wanted to fund school choice, but would never agree to fund blatant discrimination.

Many funders said they had no idea.


If you don’t know, now you know.