Voucher plan for disabled grows

The program lets special education students use private schools. State officials are working to smooth over some rough spots.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 23, 2001

Florida's voucher program for disabled students continues to grow, even as the fledgling effort experiences growing pains and as the state looks into tightening controls.

The McKay Scholarships, named after Florida Senate President John McKay, started the school year with 3,770 participants. Now, near the middle of the school year, the number of students has increased to 3,909.

That's the number of participants registered with the Florida Department of Education as of Nov. 1 -- the date the state was to send the second round of payments to participating private schools.

But not all the checks went out on time. About 500 tuition checks were two or three weeks late due to a computer programming glitch, according to a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education.

Despite those and other problems in the program, parental demand seems to be steady.

"The program is great; it gives parents a chance to choose the school," said Leslie Wise of St. Petersburg. "But you have to do your homework before you send your child."

Wise learned that lesson the hard way. She had her son, a seventh-grader, in Bethel Metropolitan Christian School on a McKay Scholarship early this school year, but she became dissatisfied.

Her son returned to public school. Since then, Wise has been checking with other private schools in the area and has arranged for her son to enter the private Kanner Academy in St. Petersburg in January.

"The first school didn't work out," Wise said. "But now I know that I need to check out the school first."

She encouraged parents to visit the school and be sure it has the means to meet the specific needs of the child.

The McKay Scholarship program, in just its second year statewide, is for special education children, many of them with mild dyslexia or other slight learning difficulties. Parents dissatisfied with public schools can arrange to send their child to a private school willing to take the state voucher, and Florida taxpayers will pay the tuition.

The program has spawned an explosion of private schools interested in taking state dollars to educate disabled children. In September, 342 private schools were participating, up from 68 schools at that time last year.

And the money is flowing.

With two of four payment periods accounted for, the state has spent $12.9-million on the program thus far. That means the state is on schedule to spend roughly $25.8-million during the course of the school year.

Those figures represent a loss to public schools. The McKay Scholarship money is transferred from public school budgets to private schools as children move.

School choice advocates say they are heartened by the news of parents being willing to move children. They view it as evidence that parents are taking advantage of a range of choices.

"The program is about empowering parents to make decisions," said Patrick Heffernan, president of Floridians for School Choice.

But this mobility gives administrators something of a headache. Some parents signed up their children for private schools, but kept them in public school. Others, dissatisfied with one private school, moved the students to another.

The constant movement means state and local school officials must scramble to keep track of where students are and to provide services for them.

The transfer of money and children from public to private schools also is proving complicated.

In October, Education Commissioner Charlie Crist created a task force to study the new program and decide whether the state should change the rules governing the disbursement of voucher money. The task force includes Crist's general counsel, the director of school choice programs, a DOE finance officer, the department's inspector general and Crist's chief of staff.

The task force was formed after a handful of parents at Bethel Metropolitan Christian School in St. Petersburg left the school dissatisfied.

Some of the problems apparently have been remedied. Parents complained there were no textbooks. The school has textbooks now. One parent filed a child abuse complaint against the school. The Pinellas Sheriff's Office investigated the complaint and ruled it unfounded.

But some of the parents' questions were more complicated. Some questioned the handling of tuition checks by the school's management company, AJC 2000 Management Team. The company had parents sign over power of attorney so the tuition checks could be sent directly to AJC in Navarre Beach, near Pensacola. The law says parents must sign the checks over to the school.

AJC Management had the same payment arrangement with five other schools it manages around the state. Though state law says the scholarship checks must be signed by parents, state officials say the use of power of attorney is legal.

Crist and members of the task force said they are looking not at any one school, but at larger issues such as the method and schedule for payments.

For instance, Yvonne C. Reed Christian School accepted children who left Bethel but received no first-quarter tuition payments for those children, despite their spending half the payment period at Yvonne C. Reed. Under law, the state has no arrangements for making partial payments.

The director of Yvonne C. Reed Christian, Yvonne Clayton, said she was told that she would have to speak to the AJC Management company if she wanted to seek partial tuition for the children.

"I got a letter from their attorney saying I wouldn't be getting any money," Clayton said. "I'm not going to worry about it. The kids are learning; that's what important."

Despite all those questions, the program remains popular with parents of special education children.

"I'm happy with the program and with the school," said Trinette Cole, whose son attends Bethel Metropolitan. "I had some doubts, but I wanted to give it a chance."

Cole kept her child, a fifth-grader, at Bethel even during the earlier problems in the school year that led some parents to leave.

"I've seen some major changes; the kids are happier," Cole said.

Heffernan of Floridians for School Choice and others see the formation of the state task force as an opportunity to eliminate some problems and strengthen the program, the first of its kind in the nation.

"The program is new," Heffernan said. "As with any new program, you learn things you didn't know before. I think the state is addressing those things."

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