Given that education board chairman Phil Handy last month dismissed potential fraud and criminality in the school voucher program as "hiccups," Florida lawmakers might not want to hold their breath for signs of deference. But one would think that a state agency asking for a quick $8.7-million to pay for its mistakes would not be so eager to engage the people who write the checks.
Not the state Department of Education. It's as defiant as ever.
The people who work in the Turlington Building in Tallahassee somehow managed, in the name of privatization, to turn over the education system's Internet network to a company without knowing for sure how they would pay for it. They were betting on a federal grant to pick up the extra costs, but botched that grant by not following the rules for competitive bidding. So DOE was forced to ask for a midyear appropriation of $7.6-million just to keep the computer network - which serves 67 school districts, 11 universities and 28 community colleges - running until July.
DOE's response? Chief financial officer Ray Monteleone says the grant, twice denied to date, was lost to a "subjective technicality."
That's not all, unfortunately. DOE also managed to take a legislative pilot program for private online schools and award 227 of the 894 vouchers last fall to students who had never attended public schools. This is significant, given that the law the agency was carrying out is imminently clear: "Eligibility is limited to students who were enrolled and in attendance at a Florida public school... during the prior school year."
DOE's response? Though Education Commissioner Jim Horne at first took "full responsibility," general counsel Daniel Woodring insisted the law was ambiguous.
This act is wearing thin on lawmakers in both chambers and parties, as well it should. Senate Education Appropriations Chairwoman Lisa Carlton, a Republican, told Monteleone: "I don't think that any of the members of this committee appreciate the fact that the department hedged their bets, took a risk on federal money."
House Education Appropriations Chairman David Simmons, a Republican, told Woodring: "When you are in a hole 6-feet down, one of the things you stop doing is digging. And it seems to me that this is a mistake that the DOE is going to have to 'fess up to."
Maybe the next education reform ought to begin with DOE, an agency apparently plagued with hiccups.
