'Other' voucher plan to unfurl

Vouchers will be available this year for about 340,000 disabled schoolchildren.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY

© St. Petersburg Times,
published May 31, 2001

Florida's lesser known voucher program, which enables disabled children to attend private school at the taxpayers' expense, is poised to grow in a big way this coming school year.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law Wednesday a bill that allows the program to expand well beyond the experimental stage and to include thousands of schoolchildren with disabilities.

The program -- commonly called the McKay Scholarship program for the bill's primary advocate, Senate President John McKay -- started out with just two Sarasota children under a pilot program in 1999-2000. Then it expanded to include nearly 1,000 children during the school year now ending. Participation has been limited by state law, but also by the fact that few parents of disabled children knew about the program.

Under the bill signed into law Wednesday, the state is no longer limiting enrollment in the program, so that any of the state's estimated 340,000 disabled children are eligible. State officials estimate the program might be expected to include some 3,000 to 5,000 children during the coming school year.

Bush, who signed the bill on the same day he and Education Commissioner Charlie Crist were congratulating public schools on their improved state report cards, issued no statement on the expansion of the voucher program.

Thus far, the program has been popular primarily among parents of children with learning disabilities. But it is available to children with any kind of disability, from a mild reading disability to a serious physical impairment.

The amount of the voucher depends upon the amount of services the student was receiving in public school. This year, the average was $6,860 and the state spent about $6-million on vouchers. But the Department of Education insists that the money is simply transferred along with the student leaving for private school. The vouchers are not supposed to cost taxpayers or schools any additional money.

Still, the program has attracted plenty of critics, and the concern of some school board attorneys. They worried that parents who take a private school voucher might forfeit their federal rights to a "free appropriate public education." Parents of disabled children are entitled to a written "individualized education plan" for their child and they can sue public schools if they fail to appropriately educate their child.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights decided parents do give up those rights. In a letter dated March 30, the agency determined that despite the use of tax dollars, parents who opted to send their child to a private school under the voucher program were just like any private school parent.

"That means that there is no guarantee that the student will receive any special education and related services while enrolled in the private school under the voucher program," Pinellas School Board Attorney John Bowen wrote in a letter notifying his colleagues of the OCR decision.

Bowen summarized by writing, "The state pays the scholarship money to the private school and the parents are on their own."

In their letter, the OCR recommended that the Florida Department of Education notify parents participating in the program that they are giving up certain rights.

It's not clear whether the state will do that as the program expands.

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