Adopting a Florida-like voucher system: be careful what you wish for

by David Safier

I see Arizona's future as a school voucher state in a long, investigative article about Florida private "schools" — they definitely are private, but for many of them, "schools" belongs in quotes — participating in the state's voucher program. It is not a pretty picture.

I can't begin to do justice to the article about the unregulated, sometimes unaccredited schools which  take Florida voucher money with outstretched hands, so I'll just pull together some frightening tidbits:

• South Florida Preparatory Christian Academy: "Two hundred students were crammed into ever-changing school locations, including a dingy strip-mall space above a liquor store and down the hall from an Asian massage parlor. Eventually, fire marshals and sheriffs condemned the "campus" as unfit for habitation, pushing the student body into transience in church foyers and public parks." . . . "We had no materials," says Nicolas Norris, who taught music despite the lack of a single instrument. "There were no teacher edition books. There was no curriculum."
• Same school: A teacher and 18-year-old student were killed when a school vehicle flipped over returning from a field trip. The driver: a 17 year old student with a learner's permit.
• Same school: Julius Brown, the school's founder, "openly used a form of corporal punishment that has been banned in Miami-Dade and Broward schools for three decades. Four former students and the music teacher Norris recall that the principal frequently paddled students for misbehaving. In a complaint filed with the DOE in April 2009, one parent rushed to the school to stop Brown from taking a paddle to her son's behind.

  "He said that maybe if we niggas would beat our kids in the first place, he wouldn't have to," the mother wrote of Brown. "He then proceeded to tell me that he is not governed by Florida school laws."

• Same school: The school received more than $2 million in voucher funds over a 4 year period.
• At other schools, "Administrators who have received funding include criminals convicted of cocaine dealing, kidnapping, witness tampering, and burglary."
• "At Homestead's Hope Academy, recipient of $2.8 million from McKay, a 2010 investigation revealed at least three staffers had criminal records. One of the employees had pleaded guilty in Georgia to intent to distribute cocaine. Another had served two years in the same state for the sale of marijuana. The school is the target of a lawsuit filed by a mother who claims her developmentally disabled daughter was repeatedly molested by a classmate on a school bus and that principal Cecil Persaud did nothing about it."
• Among the vouchers given out, some have gone to "Jacksonville's Cyber Tech Academy, to which the state had paid $54,000 in tuition through 2004 despite the fact that the school didn't physically exist."
• Jacksonville's Success Academy: "From 2001 through 2005, the school accepted $421,000 for 52 students who were enrolled in public schools."
• Muskateer's Academy in Hialeah: "[H]usband and wife school owners Jacqueline and Erick Cermeno were indicted for stealing several students' disability information to falsely enroll them and pocket thousands in tuition. Muskateer's received $794,000 from the state."
• Con artists set up fly-by-night schools, put out leaflets and billboards and enroll kids, who then show up for school at empty storefronts.

Private school vouchers have turned into a $148 million a year industry in Florida. As with Arizona's new legislation, it's only supposed to serve students with learning and physical disabilities. But at this point in Florida, "physical disabilities" can include peanut and other allergies, and asthma. And I know from my teaching years, "learning disabilities" can be found in 50% of students if you look hard enough.

The "Florida Education Miracle" looks pretty seedy in this article. Journalists should be watching our voucher system carefully over the next few years. There could be many stories that need to be told.