Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for January 6, 2006 FLORIDA RULES VOUCHERS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

The war will rage on, but anti-voucher forces (including the National Education Association) won a major victory yesterday when the Florida Supreme Court struck down the cornerstone of First Brother Jeb Bush's educational "reform". Hopefully, next in line will be President Bush's use of a natural disaster to funnel millions of dollars of public funds to private schools by getting Congressional approval of his voucher program disguised as "Hurricane Katrina Relief".

It is interesting to note in the article below the mention that these private schools (that the Bushes want everyone to go to) do NOT have to meet the guidelines laid down by NCLB - those guidelines that WE spend so many hours agonizing over. Talk about hypocrisy! (Okay...YES...I guess this has been political commentary. Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!)

From the New York Times...

Florida Supreme Court Blocks School Vouchers

By SAM DILLON

In a ruling expected to reverberate through battles over school choice in many states, the Florida Supreme Court struck down a voucher program yesterday for students attending failing schools, saying the State Constitution bars Florida from using taxpayer money to finance a private alternative to the public system.

The 5-to-2 ruling orders state officials to end, at the close of this school year, a program that Gov. Jeb Bush has considered one of his chief accomplishments.

Known as the Opportunity Scholarship Program, it uses public money to pay tuition for 730 students who have left failing public schools and enrolled in private schools. But a prominent voucher proponent said yesterday's ruling could also endanger the state's charter school system and a voucher program for disabled students, which together serve nearly 100,000 students.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the federal Constitution does not prohibit vouchers, but it also held last year that states were not obliged to finance religious education as well as secular education. Those actions left it to state courts to decide whether voucher programs were legal, and focused national attention on the battle over vouchers in Florida, which teachers' unions first challenged in 1999.

The Florida ruling cannot be appealed to the United States Supreme Court because no federal issues are involved, lawyers on both sides of the litigation said.

In its ruling, the Florida court cited an article in the State Constitution that says, "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools."

The Opportunity Scholarships Program "violates this language," the court said.

"It diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida's children," the ruling said. "This diversion not only reduces money available to the free schools, but also funds private schools that are not 'uniform' when compared with each other or the public system."

Governor Bush called the ruling "a blow to educational reform."

"It temporarily removes a critical tool for improving Florida's public schools and it also challenges the power of the Florida Legislature to decide as a matter of public policy the best way to improve our educational system," Mr. Bush said.

He said the state would explore all legal options including amending the Florida Constitution.

Voucher proponents across the nation called the ruling a setback, just weeks after Congress enacted the nation's largest federally financed school choice program, which reimburses tuition for more than 350,000 students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, regardless of whether they enroll in public or private schools.

"We ended last year with a major victory and begin this year with a major setback," said Clint Bolick, a lawyer who was a participant in the Florida litigation on behalf of voucher supporters and is president of the Alliance For School Choice, a group based in Arizona.

Since Wisconsin established the nation's first voucher program in Milwaukee in 1990, a handful of other states have followed suit, including Ohio, Colorado and Utah. In 2004, Congress enacted a voucher program for the District of Columbia.

Some of the state programs have come under legal challenge and the verdicts have been mixed. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the Milwaukee program's constitutionality in 1998. The United States Supreme Court upheld the Ohio program in 2002. But in Colorado in 2004, the State Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision that the state's newly enacted program would unconstitutionally strip local school boards of their control over education.

Joseph P. Viteritti, a professor at Hunter College who has written widely on voucher programs, called the Florida ruling important because many state constitutions have provisions similar to Florida's, requiring that public education be "uniform."

"It signals a direction that litigation may go in the future, offering a strategy for people who may want to strike voucher programs down," he said.

Chief Justice Barbara J. Pariente, who wrote the court's majority ruling, said that private schools are not "uniform," partly because they are exempt from many requirements imposed on public schools, including standardized tests and teacher credentialing rules.

Mr. Bolick, the voucher proponent, called the Florida ruling especially disheartening because it not only ends the Opportunity Scholarships Program but also offers a legal basis for challenging two other major Florida efforts: the McKay Scholarships, which provide vouchers for more than 14,000 disabled students, and the state's collection of more than 300 charter schools, which educate 82,000 students.

Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the ruling "very encouraging."

"It's clear that the court felt that public monies ought to be used for public schools," Ms. Cortese said. "Certainly for Florida this is the nail in the coffin of a voucher program."

Mr. Bush, a Republican, made the voucher plan a cornerstone of his campaign for governor, and the Legislature approved it weeks after he took office in 1999.

Later the same year, the two national teachers' unions - the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers - along with a coalition of other groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People supported a few Florida parents in filing at least two suits challenging the program.

The parallel antivoucher suits were eventually consolidated.

Lawyers for an array of groups that support school choice, including the Florida Catholic Conference and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, filed briefs in the case defending vouchers.

But...First Brother Jeb Bush is not going down without a fight.

From the Orlando Sentinel...

A day after a stinging high-court defeat, Bush struggles to salvage the program for students.

John Kennedy and Jim Stratton
Sentinel Staff Writers

A day after the Florida Supreme Court struck down a key part of Gov. Jeb Bush's school-voucher program, Bush said Friday that he would support a constitutional amendment to salvage the plan that gives tax money to students attending private schools.

He said elected officials have every right to look for new ways to accomplish the goals of the voucher program, which provides state scholarships to students who wish to leave struggling public schools for private ones.

"I think they [Supreme Court justices] got it wrong," said Bush, who was in Orlando speaking to the Tiger Bay political club. "The Legislature has every right" to craft a law or ask voters to "modify the constitution if it's appropriate."

"That's the way the system works," Bush said.

Before defending his voucher program, the governor unveiled a $565 million plan to boost hurricane preparedness in the state. Among the plan's provisions are a $5.3 million public-information campaign, $30 million to install permanent generators at special-needs shelters and almost $70 million to ensure that county emergency management centers can withstand hurricanes.

The plan, financed with state and federal money, also would again allow for a sales tax holiday for hurricane supplies.

Hurricane readiness "has to be the first priority, the first priority before anything else," the governor said.

On Friday, however, attention was focused on the court decision that struck down the voucher program. The ruling overturned one of the governor's prized programs and suggested two larger voucher programs might also be open to legal attack.

About 700 students are on so-called opportunity scholarships, but the two others cover more than 30,000 children.

The decision has left Bush and Republican legislative leaders looking for a way to keep alive the first-in-the-nation statewide voucher plan.

"It's way too early to write the obituary for opportunity scholarships in Florida," said Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon. "But we've got to have some time to deliberate what step to take next."

Bush and lawmakers say they have essentially two options for saving the program: Pursue a constitutional amendment, or expand the state's $88 million corporate tax-credit program for student scholarships.

Current law allows corporations to receive tax credits for providing private-school scholarships to low-income students. Legislators might seek to expand that program though it too may ultimately be challenged in court -- to cover the more than 700 students in the program affected by this week's ruling. Preliminary estimates have put the expansion at $3 million.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, is among those wrestling with how to craft a voucher program that will meet constitutional muster.

Webster said that asking voters in November to approve private-school vouchers is a possibility and may be the likely course taken by supporters. He conceded that "it may be a tough sell" with voters.

Webster also acknowledged that at the moment he didn't see any clear state law changes that could accommodate the court's 5-2 ruling.

"It was a pretty broad decision," he said.

Bush has criticized the process to amend the constitution, saying it ties the Legislature's hands.

For Bush, the voucher defeat is part of a string of setbacks dealt him by the state's highest court, including the 2000 presidential election, abortion issues, budget matters, the death penalty and even the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Clearwater woman whose case roiled Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court last spring.

The most recent decision, however, may undo a program that had been shaping up as a central part of the governor's legacy.

"The Supreme Court of Florida has effectively reached up and poked [Bush] in the eye, and that's wrong," said John Thrasher, a Tallahassee lobbyist who was House speaker during Bush's first year in office.

Bush has already revived the Foundation for Florida's Future, the nonprofit organization he used to advance his public policies and political career before being elected governor in 1998.

Thrasher said that rallying support for vouchers would be a task suited to the group, which is being led by Bush allies, including his former campaign finance director, Ann Herberger.

But the foundation's executive director, Mandy Fletcher, said Friday that, like others involved in the voucher issue, the organization had not yet decided on its immediate goals.

"It was very unfortunate what happened," Fletcher said of the court ruling. "But at this point, I don't really know what we might be looking to do."