As the program faces several inquiries, education chief Jim Horne says innovations always prompt attacks.
By ALISA ULFERTS
Published March 29, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - The top assistants to Education Commissioner Jim Horne wear a small pin on their lapel that reads: No Excuses.
For Horne, an accountant overseeing what may be the worst accounting problems in the department's history, the pin is a reminder that all of the state's 2.5-million students deserve an equal opportunity to learn.
But critics say it is Horne who has no excuses. They blame him for the multiple investigations - at least one of them criminal - now dogging Florida's controversial school voucher programs.
Accounting errors, chronic turnover and management failures at the department's Office of School Choice have led to public tongue-lashings from Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, a fellow Republican. Horne's former Senate colleagues are unhappy that their poster child for GOP education policy has not received the supervision its toddler status demands.
For Horne, the criticism is simply the price of innovation.
"I'm a reformer. I'm an experimenter. It's kind of like research and development," Horne said recently with a wave toward the window of his 15th-story office overlooking downtown Tallahassee.
Though he admits he could have done more to keep tabs on his Office of School Choice, which has refused to place financial controls over private schools that take voucher money or the nonprofit organizations that dole it out, Horne said he lacks the legal authority to fully check the backgrounds of voucher participants.
Lawmakers agree and have filed bills that would allow his office to do a better job of vetting private schools that take public money.
But the problems have been a major embarrassment for Gov. Jeb Bush, who has a presidential brother seeking re-election this year. And the state is gearing up for something even bigger next year, when it must begin spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on the prekindergarten program Florida voters approved in 2002.
As with vouchers, much of that money will end up in private hands because many school districts don't have the space for prekindergarten classes.
Despite Bush's continued backing of Horne, whom he appointed in 2001, Capitol insiders have whispered for months that the voucher problems could lead to his ouster.
Horne has heard the whispers. He knows that many of his detractors view him as little more than Bush's puppet.
He says they're wrong.
"I'm not one who can just be told what to do," Horne says.
Yet even those who support and work with Horne seem uncomfortable when the topic turns to his viability. Senate Education Committee Chairman Lee Constantine was asked recently about Horne's future. He answered first with a shrug, then said the matter belonged to Bush.
"There are many straws on the camel's back," said Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs. "Being commissioner of education is not an easy job. You are never going to win. No one is ever happy."
Leaving a mark
James Wallace Horne is the youngest of three brothers. His father worked the railroads for 46 years. His mother stayed home and raised the boys.
Horne, 45, said his family spanned the 20th century in typical American fashion. His grandfather never finished high school. His father graduated from high school but stopped there. Horne and his brothers all attended college.
Horne's older brothers earned athletic scholarships while Horne studied accounting at Florida State University, graduating in three years.
"I never believed I was a genius or especially smart, but I always believed I could outwork the next guy," Horne said.
Don't let that self-deprecation fool you, said eldest brother David Horne. Jim enjoys being underestimated and watches people far more closely than he lets on.
"I'm always surprised how much he picked up between the lines," David Horne said.
During college, Horne had little time for fraternities, sports or other extracurriculars, preferring to keep his head down, his nose clean and in the books. He didn't even attend his own graduation.
Horne said he picked accounting because at the time it had one of the highest starting salaries of any major. When he graduated, he became the youngest tax manager ever in Price Waterhouse's Jacksonville office.
"I'm a good accountant," Horne said in a rare show of self-promotion.
After college, he married fellow accountant Lori McArdle of New York. They have four children: Ashley, 18, Laura, 15, John David, 12, and Katherine, 10. All have attended public schools.
Horne caught the political bug early - he was student body president in high school - but then it lay dormant for almost 20 years. It wasn't until the Republican sweep of 1994, the year future House Speaker Newt Gingrich signed his Contract with America, that Horne decided to run for the state Senate. And that was only at the insistence of friends and neighbors, who had grown weary of Horne's grousing about the state of the state.
"I campaigned on crime. I did not campaign on education," Horne said.
But he let then-Senate President Toni Jennings talk him into chairing the education budget committee. Jennings, now Bush's lieutenant governor, said she picked Horne because she thought it would take an accountant to unravel the state's complex education financing formulas.
"If I had listened to him he might have been the secretary of corrections instead of the commissioner of education," Jennings said.
Horne showed early in his legislative career that he had an appetite for power. While still in his first term, he made an unprecedented run for Senate president, challenging then-Senate Rules Committee Chairman Bill Bankhead, now Bush's juvenile justice secretary.
"I want to change things, I want to leave my mark," Horne said at the time. Jennings ended up serving a second term as Senate president, which preserved the peace in the upper chamber. Horne went on to hold important committee assignments, including the powerful chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee.
In 1998, Horne's name was floated as a possible running mate for Bush. But that slot went to then-Education Commissioner Frank Brogan, who was viewed as a more moderate choice.
Politically speaking, there is little moderate about Horne.
He is opposed to abortion and is an outspoken critic of what he sees as an out-of-control judiciary. Even before Bush became governor, he was pushing to tie funding to school performance.
Horne voted for vouchers as early as 1996. He was on the winning side of a 5-4 committee vote that year that would have allowed vouchers in some cases. Though it failed to pass the full Legislature, the committee victory represented a significant shift in Florida education policy.
"Horne is a true advocate of parent choice, and I respect him for that," said John Kirtley, a Tampa venture capitalist and one of the architects of the state's corporate voucher system.
Kirtley said he isn't surprised Horne is getting much of the blame for problems in the voucher programs.
"Whenever people try to change something that has been the same for 100 years, people get upset," he said.
Demanding changes
What upsets Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher about the state's voucher programs is an arrest at a private school for embezzlement, and the many questions surrounding the accounting practices of other organizations that handle vouchers.
The problems "created a lack of accountability and (have) put the success of these vital school choice programs at risk," Gallagher wrote in an audit last year.
Horne was initially dismissive of calls for greater accountability. "The primary accountability and responsibility lies with the parent," he said.
Then Gallagher released the audit.
"We agree that more accountability is vital," Horne said.
Democrats in both legislative chambers now find themselves in the strange position of demanding better oversight of a program they didn't support in the first place.
"Personally, I am no fan of vouchers," said House Democratic Leader Doug Wiles of St. Augustine. "However, as long as vouchers are going to exist in Florida, we need to take steps to ensure that schools are held accountable for the state money they receive and for the quality of student education."
People who blame Horne for the programs' shortcomings are blaming the wrong man, said Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association, the state's largest teachers union.
Blame Bush, he said.
"It comes from one source," Pudlow said. He said the association has been disappointed with Horne's performance as education commissioner, but doubts he has been given much independence.
So far, Bush has been unwavering in his backing of Horne, who he says is doing an admirable job of carrying out Bush's vision for Florida education. In an e-mail, Bush said students, teachers and schools have all improved under the new policies he has set and Horne has developed.
"These reforms - and successes - have met with opposition each step along the way, and I appreciate Jim's hard work and tenacity over the years," Bush said.
Meanwhile, Gallagher's office is continuing its multiple investigations into the voucher debacle. Horne welcomes the scrutiny, and says he will continue moving forward with school choice programs, even if it means more criticism.
"What we're doing is hard," Horne said, but he'll keep at it for one reason: "I'm a full believer in choice."
