The address listed as the home of the Excellence Academy, a religious school in St. Petersburg, is an estate in foreclosure, with broken windows, overgrown vegetation, no electricity or water for at least two weeks, no license to operate a school, and citations for housing code violations. But, in a state with the largest and fastest growing school voucher program in the nation, two other facts are salient:

1) The woman who answers the door, Angela Sweet, denies she is running a school.

2) The state of Florida has paid Angela Sweet a lot of money to run a school.

Angry neighbors and city inspectors may ultimately put Sweet out of business, but the state checks she already has cashed provide another astonishing glimpse into Florida's easy voucher plan. The Excellence Academy is one of the state's 545 registered providers in the highly specialized and challenging field of education for disabled students. It is listed in state education records and advertised through state mailings and a state Web site. It is part of a voucher program, named after former Senate President John McKay, that has grown from nothing to $49.6-million in just three years.

The academy also represents the state's disturbing inclination, under McKay vouchers, to look the other way.

"It truly is a buyer beware situation," says Skardon Bliss, director of the Florida Council of Independent Schools, which accredits private schools based on a variety of academic standards. "The mainstream independent schools don't like to see this, where someone turns their living room into a school and moves around."

The McKay Scholarship law, and the way education officials administer it, invites such mischief. The law itself says a McKay school can be created overnight. The operator need only fill out a two-page form and check a box to "affirm" the school has a surety bond or letter of credit. The teachers don't have to be certified. They don't even have to be high school graduates.

If state officials had been paying any attention, Excellence Academy's application form might have raised some concerns about the proposed school's ability to provide Exceptional Student Education: "The ESE services we offer is (sic) an opportunity to master the technics (sic) of the proven language arts system to become fluent readers."

The money McKay schools can receive per student is double or triple the amount for other voucher schools. That's because the reimbursement is based on the specialized services public school districts provide to disabled students, sometimes under state and federal mandate. Though a McKay school is supposed to be paid less than that amount if its private tuition is lower, the state doesn't bother to verify the tuitions cited by the participating schools. The Excellence Academy listed its private tuition as $8,500, which allowed it to get roughly $7,100 from the state for each McKay student.

This is far from the first time that questions have been raised about the schools receiving tax money under the McKay plan. Parents at a former St. Petersburg church school complained of physical abuse, lack of textbooks and unqualified staff. Staff at a Panhandle school held a press conference earlier this year to allege their bosses were defrauding the state, that the school was accepting voucher checks for students who no longer attended, that students were not being provided promised educational services.

The emerging pattern has little to do with the stated aim of the McKay Scholarships, which was to provide a genuine private alternative for disabled students. People can earnestly debate whether private vouchers, in such circumstances, are wise public policy. But they ought to be able to agree on one thing: Tossing out tax dollars to unlicensed, nonaccredited and possibly unqualified schools -- with no oversight -- is no way to help the state's neediest students.

Angela Sweet is telling neighbors she does not run a school, but the state gave her tax money for precisely that purpose. What does Education Secretary Jim Horne have to say about it? Is the Legislature willing to do anything about it? Does John McKay still take pride of ownership? This is becoming an educational farce, and one not easily squared with the commitment to leave no child behind.

Back to Opinion

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

From the Times
Opinion page