{"id":3520,"date":"2021-03-07T09:33:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T14:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3520"},"modified":"2021-03-07T09:35:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T14:35:32","slug":"florida-citizens-for-science-reject-senate-bill-48-and-its-education-savings-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3520","title":{"rendered":"Florida Citizens for Science: Reject Senate Bill 48 and its \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Education Savings Accounts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spring and that means it is time for the annual assault on Florida public schools by the powers that be in Tallahassee. For the third year in a row Governor Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran have crafted a bill that will divert even more taxpayer dollars to private schools that are unregulated and have no accountability to anyone for what they teach. Some of these are schools that deny evolution, teach creationism, deny climate change, teach that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and much more pseudoscientific garbage. And they do it with our tax dollars. (See our posts about this: Blatant creationism in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Schools Without Rules\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a>; Reactions to Schools Without Rules article<\/a>; More reactions to Schools Without Rules article<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SB 48 is a massive 150 plus page bill<\/a>. Filed by Republican Senator Manny Diaz, it consolidates, expands, and adjusts five existing scholarship programs into two programs that will now be designated \u00e2\u20ac\u0153education savings accounts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The five programs are a complex, hard to navigate mess because each one was designed individually to get around legal challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quick refresher: Tax Credit Scholarships allow businesses to\nreceive tax credits for contributing money to one of the education scholarship\nfunds. If you have purchased a car in the past few years you were probably\nasked during the final paperwork signing if you would like to donate some of\nyour sales tax to education scholarships. This is where that money went. Because\nthe money is donated pre-tax and never enters the general revenue pot the\ncourts have ruled that tax credit scholarships are legal under the Florida\nConstitution. Of course, other sources of revenue have to be found to\ncompensate for the general revenue money lost pre-collection and the taxpayers\nfoot the bill and public schools suffer from the loss of revenue. The pre-tax concept\nwas a cynical effort by a legislature and governor obsessed with funneling\nstate revenue to unregulated private schools to circumvent the Federal and\nState Constitutions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also remember that more than two-thirds of the state scholarship\ndollars go to private, religious schools. Most of those are conservative\nChristian schools.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When DeSantis became governor, he and Corcoran (both strong advocates for school vouchers which they prefer to call school choice) started funding their new scholarship programs with general revenue. In the current session, SB 48 will merge the five existing scholarship programs into two programs and they will be officially designated as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153education savings accounts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ESA dollars can be used for a broad array of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153educational purposes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d including private school tuition, digital devices, tutoring, and access to the internet. In addition, for the first time funds will be taken from the pot of money designated for public schools, reducing the money available to public schools already struggling with COVID and unfunded security costs.  SB 48 expands scholarship awards to 97.5 per cent of student funding calculation. It provides for an annual 1 per cent growth rate in scholarships for McKay-Gardiner scholarships for students with disabilities. It decreases state auditor general operational audits of the nonprofit scholarship funding organizations from annually to once every three years but does require SFOs to be audited in the other two years by a CPA of their choosing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t changed is the complete lack of\naccountability for schools receiving money from the new education savings\naccounts. There are no standards for curriculum, no standards for teacher\nqualifications, no standards for buildings used as schools. Parents get the\nschool choice and we, the taxpayers, pay the bills so these private schools can\nindoctrinate their charges with false science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact your legislators and urge them to reject SB 48.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Post written by Florida Citizens for Science secretary David Campbell.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spring and that means it is time for the annual assault on Florida public schools by the powers that be in Tallahassee. For the third year in a row Governor Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran have crafted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-UM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2040,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2040","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":0},"title":"Reflect upon the divine","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week in the Florida House, the Finance & Tax Subcommittee debated and approved the bill \"PCB FTSC 14-02 Relating to Tax Credit Scholarships.\" This is an attempt to dramatically expand a particular school voucher program (see a previous post on this). As we've stated before, Florida Citizens for Science\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2040#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2600,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2600","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":1},"title":"Let’s not forget about the Instructional Materials bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We've been giving a lot of attention to the\u00c2\u00a0Religious Expression in Public Schools bills because they're seeing quite a bit action in the Florida legislature. But let's not forget that we're also monitoring Instructional Materials bills filed in both chambers (House Bill 989 and Senate Bill 1210). We're concerned about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2927,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2927","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":2},"title":"Another barrel of rotten apples","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel is publishing a three part series about Florida private schools raking in voucher money from the state despite some incredibly ugly problems at those schools. The first part ran today:\u00c2\u00a0Schools Without Rules: An Orlando Sentinel Investigation (Florida private schools rake in nearly $1 billion in state scholarships\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antiscience nonsense"","block_context":{"text":"Antiscience nonsense","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=21"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3010,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3010","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":3},"title":"News Roundup 12\/10\/17","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell wrote a piece about the new instructional materials bill we have in Florida as well as the pre-filed bill that's waiting for the next legislative session: Book-banning \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a crusade for Florida's simplest minds. And now, a new bill would allow activists to suggest new\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3010#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1991,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1991","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":4},"title":"Teaching Creationism is Rife in Florida Schools","author":"Jonathan Smith","date":"January 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Twelve days ago activist Zack Kopplin wrote a long piece for Slate about how Texas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153charter schools\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (special schools that are supported by state money), particularly those using the Responsive Education Solutions system, are openly teaching\u00c2\u00a0 creationism. It is, of course, illegal to teach creationism in public schools, for it\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1991#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2118,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2118","url_meta":{"origin":3520,"position":5},"title":"Nope, I didn’t say that.","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A column was published today in the Tallahassee Democrat (Michael McShane: Don't blame vouchers for poor science instruction) that agrees with my earlier column in that newspaper concerning how it's wrong to teach creationism, but then he distorts the purpose of my column and attributes motives to me that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3522,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions\/3522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}