State Education Commissioner Jim Horne spells out problems with one voucher program and proposes remedies.
By STEPHEN HEGARTY
Published October 17, 2003
ORLANDO - Education Commissioner Jim Horne unveiled new evidence of problems in Florida's voucher programs on Thursday, even as he proposed new safeguards.
A small number of children in the state's Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program received vouchers from more than one source, Horne said.
The commissioner said eight children got more than the $3,500 scholarship limit last year. The state is working to find out how that happened and to recover the overpayments.
Another problem: $168,000 that is now missing. The money was collected by an Ocala foundation and was supposed to pay for scholarships for poor children. Suspecting that a crime was committed, Horne has turned his department's investigation over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The missing money and the overpayments underscore the state's problems overseeing the voucher programs, even though they amount to a fraction of the corporate tax program, capped at $88-million this year.
The commissioner proposed a detailed legislative fix Thursday. It comes after months of criticism, unflattering news accounts and even calls for Horne's resignation.
"I think the public has a right to have its confidence restored," Horne said. "These reforms will give me the tools, and the teeth, to do the job everyone wants me to do."
Horne's recommendations include requiring private schools that participate in the corporate tax scholarship program to give voucher students a standardized test and report the results to a "private third-party research entity."
Test results would be reported only in the broadest sense. The state and public would know how the overall program fares academically, but not how individual schools or children do.
Horne also wants to prohibit scholarship funding organizations that raise and distribute voucher money from owning a school in the program. The organizations would have to undergo background checks, as would teachers at private schools that receive voucher funds.
The commissioner also has appointed a new director for the office that oversees the voucher programs: Theresa Klebacha, formerly the deputy chancellor for community colleges. She replaces Alex Penn-Williams, who will become a special adviser to Horne and will devise a database to oversee the students and schools participating in voucher programs.
Horne's recommendations got generally good reviews, though some said he did not go far enough.
"I think he totally nailed it," said John Kirtley, the Tampa man who directs one of the state's largest scholarship funding organizations. "Any time you do something brand new, to expect it to be 100 percent perfect is just not realistic. I think this goes a long way to make it a lot better."
Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, offered faint praise: "I'm happy to see the department is now taking its role seriously, because until now there's been a terrible lack of oversight."
The senator questioned why voucher students shouldn't be required to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is given to public school children. And he questioned how the public could learn how good a job the private schools are doing if their test scores aren't broken down.
A representative of the state's Catholic schools, which participate in the voucher programs, also said Horne did not go far enough. Larry Keough said he recommended that Horne require that private schools be accredited and that they be in existence for at least three years before they be eligible for voucher money.
Most of Horne's recommendations seemed designed to tighten controls on the newest voucher program, the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Under that program, corporations forgo paying state taxes if they send an equal sum to a scholarship funding organization. That organization then pays private school tuition for low-income children.
Until recently, the state didn't keep track of participating students or schools.
More than 100 kids this year were found to be registered with more than one funding organization. Not all of them received double payments, and of those that did, the overpayments have been refunded, Horne said.
But that doesn't include at least eight students who received voucher money from more than one source. The state is still trying to figure what happened and to recover the money.
State officials concede they have little control over the scholarship funding organizations. That may explain how $168,000 in voucher money could go missing.
The state initially thought as much as $400,000 might have gone astray from the Silver Archer Foundation in Ocala. But since scholarship money is transferred in payments throughout the year, James Isenhour of Silver Archer may have received only a partial amount - the $168,000 - by the time the state questioned his use of the money.
Horne also revealed the results of a compliance survey given to the 1,163 private schools that take voucher dollars. At least 250 were out of compliance in one way or another. More than 100 schools, for example, do not have reports indicating they have been inspected for radon. Another 50 have not had the owners submit to fingerprint checks.
Many of the schools have agreed to comply with state requirements, but now they may have more rules to contend with. That is one of Horne's dilemmas: In shoring up the voucher programs, he has to be careful not to alienate private schools that resist government intrusion.
"They do have to be careful not to mandate too much," said Michelle Nieves, co-founder of the Teacher's Hands Academy, a private Orlando school.
After hearing Horne's recommendations, Nieves concluded, "I don't have any problems with it."
