Fibbing in Florida: ‘School Choice’ Proponents Invent Waitlist for Voucher Program
Legislators in Florida are taking public dollars to fund scholarships for private school scholarships and most of that money goes to religious schools. It might have made a modicum of sense when the program was focused on the poor, but raising the income cap to 62K is just shoveling money to parents who can already afford the private religious education they are seeking.
Unfortunately that mini-scandal hasn’t been enough to sink the voucher issue in Florida. Fresen is backing a voucher expansion bill in the Florida House of Representatives that would increase the income cutoff for voucher students. Currently, no student with an annual household income of more than $43,568 (for a family of four) can receive a “scholarship” from the tax credit program. Fresen’s scheme would increase that income limit to $62,010. It would also increase the cap on the TCSP by $30 million for the next five years.
Democrats have expressed opposition to this plan - and with good reason.
“The core mission was to provide these corporate tax scholarships for low-income families,” said Rep. Dwayne Taylor (Daytona Beach), according to FlaglerLive. “It’s now deviated from that to families who are able to pay for their private educations.”
This whole affair shows once again that voucher advocates in state legislatures will twist the facts to push their agenda because they know that telling the truth won’t work. Vouchers in all their forms are nothing but bad educational policy that siphons money away from public coffers and hands it over to religious schools.
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