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Friday, May 1, 2015

Florida sticks a knife in the hearts of Bright Futures, so much for caring about poor and mostly minority children.

The same people who often say we must give poor and mostly minority children vouchers so they can escape poor performing public schools are the same people who voted to dramatically slash the Bright Futures Scholarship program, which you guessed it disproportionately hurts poor and mostly minority children and will prevent thousand and thousand from going to college. It seems a bit hypocritical doesn’t it?

The truth is vouchers aren’t here to help poor and mostly minority children, if that was a priority there wouldn’t be these draconian cuts to the Bright Futures Scholarships. Vouchers, which have siphoned nearly a billion dollars out pf public schools, have a more insidious purpose.  They are designed to divert what would have been public money to religious institutions, over seventy percent of voucher schools are religious and to hasten the privatization of public schools.

This should concern us all because where accountability is an often-repeated word out of Tallahassee for public schools; voucher schools have practically been given a pass. The system is even set up so that most of the schools don’t even have to reveal how the money they receive is spent.

If we truly care about the fate of poor and mostly minority children at the very least we should restore the cuts to the bright future scholarships, but I also believe we should stop siphoning money out of public schools and sending it to schools that don’t have to have certified teachers, recognized curriculums and have practically zero academic and fiscal accountability measures in place.  

1 comment:

  1. While I am concerned that our legislators have cut fundin in half for bright futures, the program has never been a means tested program. Students from wealthier neighborhoods are more likely recipient than a child from NW Jax. Bright futures is based on scoring well on standardized ACT and SAT. Inner city youth usually struggle compared to suburban kids
    the cost of attending a state college has out paced inflation. School Presidents like John Peyton should work on controlling their expenses. The rapid increase in tuition is the real tragedy in Florida

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