Jay Wheeler
School Board

How many of you would like to see money taken away from the UCF, USF, FSU, and UF Medical Schools by the state?

The plan would be to redirect the already declining revenues the state collects and redirect them to Catholic and Christian Colleges. That is essentially what the passage of amendment 8 would allow for. To be specific page 3 of 6  of the full bill that is Amendment 8 states on lines 77-79: “…permits the use of public funds in religious hospitals, schools, and other benevolent institutions…” At no time does the amendment define schools, or offer any specifics regarding ‘public funds’.

Seeing how there are no religious roads, no religious fire departments, or religious law enforcement agencies safe to say that religious schools are intended to be the primary beneficiaries of this amendment. Frankly the amendment language is exceptionally ambiguous in most every way, and lacks real specificity. A perfect brew for litigation, which will be an unintended consequence of passage of this amendment.  

To add perspective, here is how K-12 public education is funded in Florida. School districts get money on a per student basis from the state of Florida Department of Education. Those funds are referred to as FTE or full time equivalent funds. While the amount per student varies between $6,500 to $7,500 per student, for the sake of this example we will use an average of $7,000 per students. In Osceola we get closer to $6,500 per student.

In other states like New York, funds still flow to public school districts even for students attending private or religious schools. That’s why if you go to arrival and/or dismissal at non-public schools in New York State, you’ll see yellow school district buses transporting students to and from both private and religious schools.

In Florida, if a family opts to send their children to a private school, religious school, or home school, the state does not send any money back to the school district no matter how much that family has paid in taxes for public education. The state of Florida only sends money for students occupying a desk in a school. That is why there are no extra supplies for home school families; we get no funding for those students because they are not in the attendance count at a public school.

So now the question goes begging, will the state change its funding formula for public educational institutions? To make this work and truly be equitable the charter school funding formula would be easy to adopt. Charter schools are public schools that get 95 percent of FTE funds in Florida. School Districts get the other 5 percent as an administration fee. We have a total of 55,000 students enrolled in public schools in Osceola County.

Assuming that we have 2,000 students enrolled in various religious schools, we have no idea how the state will help fund those students. Will they lower the FTE amounts public schools currently get per student, or will they fund every student and allow religious schools to get the added FTE funding? Using $7K per student, that would be an extra $14m, minus an administration fee, in state funds flowing to the religious schools from the state. Another important consideration is that if religious schools take public funding would the state make them use FCAT or its replacement common core testing for accountability? Which would only seem fair, or would they be exempt from accountability, despite having taken public funds? Again, expect more taxpayer funds spent resolving these questions in court.

The problem is that no one knows what the funding formula would be because the amendment language is so ambiguous. Due to the plethora of conspicuous unknowns I am encouraging everyone to vote no on Amendment 8. No point to short change our kids needlessly, or increase the size of government in an era of already historic budget shortfalls at all levels of local and state budgets. Surely this will come with brand new government departments to manage and provide oversight. If the bill sponsors are serious, add language next go around about how monies will be spent and where they will come from, and the compliance issues decided. If this passes expect a mess that no one will know how to clean up, except for attorney’s who will sue everyone on behalf of kids, families, school districts, churches, mosques, synagogues, and the vendors all waiting in the wings to get their hands on an already shrinking supply of government funds. Amendment 8’s only real winners if it passes will be the lawyers, for the first few years it will be like a holiday for them every day with litigation fees upon litigation fees. Taxpayers, students, and everyone else will lose.     

Jay Wheeler is an Osceola County School Board member, district 1.