State: Students in limbo as voucher battle rages

The day after a circuit judge tossed out Florida's school voucher law, the state appealed on Tuesday, triggering an automatic stay of an injunction preventing the state from allowing students to use vouchers.

That means the 705 students who planned to use state money to attend private schools can go ahead with their plans as the school year begins.

But that could change.

The next move is up to voucher opponents. They plan to ask the circuit judge to impose a partial injunction. A spokesman for the Florida Education Association teachers union said Tuesday that voucher opponents would ask the judge to prevent 661 students from using vouchers for the first time this school year, while allowing 44 Pensacola students who have used school vouchers for three years to continue.

"We certainly don't want this program to grow," said Ron Meyer, the lead attorney challenging the state's 3-year-old voucher law. "But we don't want these kids to become a pawn in this tug of war with the governor."

The timing of the legal maneuvering, just before the start of school, means some parents aren't sure where their children will attend school.

It is especially difficult for parents in Escambia County, where public school started Tuesday. But many private schools in the area don't start until next week, so parents have a few days to wait for the legal wrangling to settle down.

"The parents don't know what they're going to do," said Tracy Richardson of Pensacola, whose 11-year-old daughter attends a Montessori school using a state voucher. She said parents have called her with questions, and their strategy is to assume they can use the voucher.

"But they could change everything again on Monday," Richardson said.

Each side in the legal battle blamed the other Tuesday for putting parents through the upheaval.

"It seems to me the parents ought to come first in this case," said Gov. Jeb Bush, the main proponent of the voucher program and the first defendant listed in the lawsuit.

Bush said that the vast majority of students taking vouchers were minority or low-income students.

Said Bush: "I think they ought to be allowed to go to the school of their choice."

But voucher opponents questioned whether the governor put parents first.

"The governor has led these families down an unconstitutional path," said Tony Welch, FEA spokesman. "We have said all along this is unconstitutional and we shouldn't put parents through this."

Welch and Meyer said they hoped the state would move the case to the Florida Supreme Court as soon as possible. They could do so by asking the 1st District Court of Appeal to certify that the case is of great public importance.

"It's time to get to the end point, for everybody," Meyer said.

Barry Richard, attorney for the state, agreed the case was important and urgent, but disagreed that it warranted a quick trip to the Florida Supreme Court. If the stay remains, Richard said, the case could be decided in court with little inconvenience to parents.

Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuit does not directly affect Florida's other school voucher programs, including the McKay Scholarship program for students with disabilities.

That program involves thousands of parents. But when the current lawsuit was filed three years ago, the disability voucher program did not exist and therefore was not included in the suit.

Meyer said voucher opponents had no immediate plans to challenge other voucher programs. Either way, he said, the case now making its way through the courts likely will have a big impact on any future challenges, since many of the issues would be the same.

-- Times staff writer Alisa Ulferts contributed to this report.

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