Under legislation endorsed today by the Republican supermajority in the Florida legislature, the state will underwrite vouchers for every student in the state, regardless of income. Students in private schools, students who never attended public schools will get a subsidy from the state.
TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Senate gave final approval Thursday to a bill creating universal school vouchers, and sent it to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his expected approval.
The Senate voted 26-12 along party lines to approve the bill (HB 1).
Republican state lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, want to open state voucher programs that currently provide scholarships to more than 252,000 children with disabilities or from low-income families to all of the 2.9 million school-age children in Florida, with an estimated cost ranging from $210 million to $4 billion in the first year.
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples called it “one of the most transformative bills the Legislature has ever dealt with….”
But opponents raised concerns about sweeping money out of the public school system and subsidizing private education, in some cases for children of wealthy parents.
“There is no money following the child like we hear over and over again because they were never in public school,” said Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville. “You can’t ever follow something that was never in public school.”
Private schools don’t follow the same academic standards as public schools and can set their own curriculum, they said, pointing out that they could be teaching neo-Nazism and the state couldn’t do anything to stop them.
Nor do they have to meet the same safety requirements as charter and public schools must do.
The state does not generally regulate private schools, so there are no requirements that teachers have college degrees or for standardized testing to grade the quality of the schools.
Private schools also don’t have to follow the same safety requirements as charter and public schools.
Democrats also objected to taxpayer dollars being sent to religious schools. About three out of four schools that receive vouchers are religious in nature.
“House Bill 1 further erodes the separation of church and state. Taxpayers are paying for Floridians to discriminate,” the League of Women Voters of Florida tweeted.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, it will be “transformative.” Students will be more lost than ever.
Exactly. This is a bill to destroy public education.
NCLB/ESSA already demolished public education.
I wonder how many of DDDD’s state/federal unconstitutional legislation will end up being axed in court by the time he’s lost in the fog of history.
“If they can kill it there, they’ll kill it everywhere.”
To be sung to tune of New York, New York, on the topic of public education.
yup
Holy cow! That’s the most topical thing the guy has ever (supposedly) written. I can see it now –
Indictment is imminent
* The case – bribing a porn star to be silent – is not going to do well for him. * * Expect to see the Access Hollywood video a few times
* He’s got a checklist of cases in several courts that will at some point be more definitive
* Unlike Jan 6, he directly wrote “go protest” this is not your Civil Rights / Viet Nam / Women’s Right protest
The rest is so typical – first person, “kingmaker,” a few shots but not that nasty (he doesn’t want to lose desatanis’ base)
And, who knew he knew Covid was a thing.
A serious candidate would take this list of Florida’s rankings and tell the exPres that if can say one sentence of what he would do on each one that has content and substance and no adjectives they’ll drop out.
My Florida cousin worries about their taxes, especially in light of their income being dependent on a combination of retirement and investments. How many more Florida voters are in this shape? How can this plan succeed politically?
This has always been the problem associated with funding education in an economy heavily influenced by retired taxpayers. Many of these people selected their geographic location due to a low tax burden. This puts downward pressure on public school expenditures. Now we are seeing systems that will shift spending from every student to only the ones supported by a particular group.
The only way this program can be funded is that the price of it will be kept low by ignoring a majority of students. Contrast to his economic reality with the statements emanating from the Florida plan’s supporters: our plan is for the students. Of course this is bunk. DeSantis wants to give money to his supporters but not his detractors.
If the 18-40 year olds would just show up and vote…
Insane. And initially, the bulk of it will go to students ALREADY in private school.
https://www.floridapolicy.org/posts/florida-hb-1-2023-potential-fiscal-impacts
See also:
https://edlawcenter.org/news/archives/school-funding-national/hb1-universal-voucher-program-would-cost-billions.html
The new voucher program does create some business opportunities. Here are a couple that occur to me:
Business Plan 1 (Bob n Dalene’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School: we put the duh in Flor-uh-duh):
Come on down to our “Race to the Top of Mount Zion Enrollment Jubilee” in the old K-Mart parking lot this Saturday and sign yore kids up for Bob n Darlene’s Real Good Floruhduh School. You can use yore Florida State Scholarships to pay for it, and so its absolutely FREE!!!! No longer due you havta send yore children to them gobbermint schools run by Socialists whar they will be taut to be transgendered! We offer compleet curriculems, wrote by Bob’s girlfriend Darlene herself, including
World HIS-story (from Creation to the United States of Dimocrat Babylon to the Rapshure)
Political Science (We thank you, Lord, for Donald Trump n Rhonda Santis; the Second Amendmint; and protecting our Borders from invading hoardes of rapists and murderers)
English (the offishul langwidge of the United States, and the langwidge the Bible was wrote in)
Science (the six days of creation; how to make yore own buckshot; and how Cain and Abel survived among the dinosaurs)
Economics (when rich people get tax brakes, that makes you richer)
And much, much more!!! Plus, you don’t havta worry yore hed about safety, cause all are teachers is locked and loaded!
Bob n Darlene’s, located across from Bob’s Gun and Pawn right next to Wild Wuornos’s Adult Novelties.
It’s been real good runnin’ this here skool. Free innerprize! So much better then tryin to live on Darlene’s disability! Make America Grate Agin!
Business Plan 2 (Akashic Kakistonics, or Opening Heaven’s Gate to Every Child):
Tired of those failing public schools? Want to send your child a true Akashic Academy where he/she/they can receive nourishment for the mind AND the soul?
Then enroll him/her/them in Enlightened Master Bob’s AYAHUASCA SCHOOL FOR LITTLE COSMIC VOYAGERS.
Here at Enlightened Master Bob’s, your child will learn how he or she can skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner and draw nourishment directly from Father Sun in our Solar Temple.
We offer complete holistic health training, using our proprietary textbooks on the Ethereal Body, including uncapping and aligning children’s Chakras so they can download DIRECTLY from the Mother Ship the Cosmic Light necessary for the coming Transformation from Earth-bound Homo sapiens to Interdimensional Beings.
In our history classes, students will learn all about Atlantis, Lemuria, Camelot and Glastonbury, the Black Rock Desert, and other Places of Power throughout the Ages.
Students will also learn how to protect themselves against the forces of the Evil Galactic Emperor Xenu and his band of sometimes invisible, shape-shifting reptilian aliens from Alpha Draconis.
But don’t delay! Soon, as our galaxy moves into proximity to the Pleiades, the vibrational tone of the entire planet will rise to such a pitch that we will either undergo Ascension or explode, and everything—the FATE OF THE PLANET– depends on how many young Lightworkers we can bring into Alignment and Cosmic Consciousness before then!
Of course, all this is absolutely FREE because you can use your State Scholarship Voucher to pay for it.
And best yet, all classes are taught by the Spiritual Wives of Enlightened Master Bob himself!!!!
I think you should add the beheaded wives of Henry VIII to your faculty.
Sounds like this wood require one of them Socialist conjurin triks, Roy. Whut the devils gotten in to you?
Who will get the Chair for the Department of Blasphemy?
DeSantis is beefing up the State Guard. Perhaps they will become the state Morality Police:
When Gov. Ron DeSantis first proposed reviving the long-dormant Florida State Guard, he wanted 200 volunteers and a modest $5 million budget. Then it grew to 400 members and $10 million. Now it’s 1,500 members and a nearly $100 million budget — with police powers, helicopters, boats and, under one lawmaker’s request, cellphone-hacking technology.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article273531330.html#storylink=cpy
If’n you wants the job, Grag, jist let me ask you: do you except Donald J. Trump as yore lord n savior?
I only know how to blaspheme (quite well!), not prevent it.
Nationally, religious schools account for 80.2% of private school students (Freedom from Religion Foundation).
“Taxpayer-funded vouchers in Florida go mostly to religious schools” (Union Bulletin, 3-16-2023).
Most of the schools are conservative religious where discrimination against women is part of the fabric of the sects’ beliefs.
The reputation of Catholic schools in terms of academic achievement?
The Union Bulletin summarizes a sampling of private schools that have had academic losses – among those the reporter listed, “several Catholic high schools.”
A friend of mine in Tampa, who worked as a paralegal in a law firm that sued doctors, said that her first malpractice suit was to help a man who was supposed to have an appendectomy but instead had one leg cut off at the knee. He was only aged 22.
She says this new law will prevent people from suing doctors and will lower malpractice insurance premiums. Insurance companies are the winners.
………………………………………………………….
Sweeping legal reforms passed by Florida Legislature, dividing Republicans
House Bill 837 will make it harder and more expensive to sue insurance companies.
…The legislation has a broad sweep that affects all kinds of litigation, but the main provisions would:
Do away with the state’s roughly 130-year-old law requiring insurance companies to pay the policyholder’s attorney’s fees if the policyholder sues and wins in court. The provision was meant to level the playing field between policyholders and insurance companies
Limit how much someone could collect in medical expenses in negligence lawsuits.
Require juries in lawsuits against apartment complexes and other places over lax security to weigh the role of criminals — such as the Parkland shooter — when determining the level of negligence.
Parkland parents and victims of shootings at apartment complexes said that the bill would let property owners off the hook for providing shoddy security, testimony that moved some lawmakers….
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/03/23/lawsuits-insurance-auto-homeowners-rates-negligence-tort-reform/
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/03/23/lawsuits-insurance-auto-homeowners-rates-negligence-tort-reform/?outputType=amp