The Florida Roundup - Florida’s worsening teacher shortage; PragerU for K-12 schools; vouchers for all

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

With back-to-school season in full swing, we talk about the latest in education news, including how various districts are handling a teacher shortage, the approval of PragerU educational materials in K-12 schools and Florida's recently expanded vouchers program.

As a new school year looms, Florida grapples with a worsening teacher shortage. Some school districts are trying out novel approaches to find teachers. Things are not getting better, they're getting more difficult. And so we're going to have to look at innovative ways to make sure that there is a certified teacher in front of every classroom. This is the Florida Roundup from WLRN Public Media in Miami and WJCT Public Media in Jacksonville. I'm Danny Rivero. And I'm Matthew Petty. Ahead this hour, we look at the causes behind these shortages and what can be done to address them. Plus, a change to state standards makes room for conservative teaching texts.

And later, who's taking advantage of Florida's universal school choice and how will it impact public school funding? You can join the conversation at 305-995-1800 on the Florida Roundup with your phone calls after the news. Welcome to the Florida Roundup. I'm Danny Rivero in Miami. And I'm Matthew Petty in Tampa. Next week, many children will head back to classrooms across Florida. Meanwhile, school districts across the state are still trying to fill vacancies. In Leon County, there's an estimated 80 openings for teachers.

In Leon County, there's an estimated 80 openings for teachers. The school district there has partnered up with Tallahassee Community College to offer high schoolers who want to become teachers a chance to earn a college credit. And in the Keys, the teacher shortage has gotten so bad that the school district plans to hire virtual teachers for the upcoming school year. That is not the most desirable form, but it is a way of getting a certified teacher working with students, and we're going to pilot it and see how effective it is. Things are not getting better. They're getting more difficult, and so we're going to have to look at innovative ways to make sure that there is a certified teacher in front of every classroom. We lost a teacher today because she can't find a place to live. And that's Monroe County School Superintendent Teresa Axford.

As of Tuesday, the county had 28 teacher vacancies. Most of the U.S. is dealing with a teacher shortage in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Florida has one of the worst teacher shortages in the U.S. is dealing with a teacher shortage in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Florida has one of the worst teacher shortages in the nation. And some say it's in part due to the recent education policies and an increasingly hostile climate for teachers. Joining us now to discuss all of this, we welcome WLRN's education reporter, Kate Payne, and also welcoming Jeff Solichek, who covers education for the Tampa Bay Times. Kate, Jeff, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us.

Thank you. And we want to hear from you, listeners. Are you a current or a former teacher? Maybe you've recently decided to leave the profession. You're thinking of getting in? You thinking of getting in? Give us a call to talk about it at 305-995-1800 or send us a tweet at Florida Roundup. Kate, let's start with you. Monroe County, as we heard, is taking the step to start zooming teachers into the classrooms because they simply don't have enough teachers who live in the Florida Keys. How is this going to work?

Yeah, so again, the superintendent, Teresa Axler, announced this plan this week to work with a company called Elevate K-12. They haven't signed that contract yet, but the idea is to hire these remote teachers from wherever in the country to work in critical shortage areas like biology, chemistry, and environmental science. And then there will be a teacher's aide physically in the classroom with kids to help manage the classroom while the certified teacher is on Zoom from wherever. So the certified teacher would be remote, but there would be someone in the class. I imagine the teacher's aide would deal with disciplinary things, which requires a physical presence, I guess, right? I would imagine, yeah.

It's hard to picture. I don't know of any other district, certainly in the state, that's taken this step. But it definitely seems like a new level, a new sign of how dire the shortage has become. And there's challenges for recruiting and keeping teachers that are pretty unique to the Florida Keys. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so we've talked about these trends that are affecting districts across the country as far as the low pay, the political pressure that many teachers are under. But the dynamics are particularly acute in South Florida and especially in the Keys because of this ongoing affordable housing crisis. So development in the Keys is strictly limited because of rules around hurricane evacuations.

So, you know, the idea being if there are too many people living in too many homes, residents won't have enough time to drive up that one road going in and out of the islands. enough time to drive up that one road going in and out of the islands. So new construction is tightly limited. And that's the big restriction. You know, Superintendent Axford has said, it's a constant struggle. You know, sometimes it seems like on a daily basis of offering a job to a teacher, they're committed, they're ready to go, and they cannot find a place to live. And they rescind the offer. In Broward County, some school board members want to boost teacher pay into the six figures in order to retain and recruit teachers. The idea was voted down, but just barely voted down. What was the thinking behind that? I mean, that would be a significant pay raise for a lot of educators. Sure. Yeah. And

the hope is that, you know, $100,000 in total compensation would be a tipping point for teachers to stay in the district. And, you know, we've heard from a string of teachers coming to Broward County school board meetings lately, talking about the extra jobs they've had to take on to cover their bills, you know, saying they cannot afford to buy a house in the community, that they can't afford to retire. And so this... Can Broward County afford that? I mean, if they were to pass it? So that's the question. The proposal that this one school board member,

Alan Zeman, put forward, the rest of the school board really couldn't stomach the budget cuts that he was proposing to make up for that money to fund these pay raises. And that was the sticking point for them. But the board is very much still looking into this the superintendent will be coming up with with his own proposal over the coming months and they plan to circle back in january school districts from the panhandle to the keys are struggling to fill staffing vacancies as

we've been talking about st john's county just south of jacksonville had 285 teacher vacancies, as we've been talking about. St. John's County, just south of Jacksonville, had 285 teacher vacancies as of yesterday, on Thursday. That's after a record number of resignations took place at the end of the last school year. Michelle Dillon is the president of the St. John's Education Association, the teachers union for the county. Let's listen to her. So when you start the school year with a vacancy, it is a trickle down effect. You might have a sub, we're so grateful for our substitutes, but we never know if that substitute

is going to stick around. Sometimes the students are divided into other classrooms. Sometimes they get sat in the auditorium or a gym with somebody watching over them. That's not the way anybody wants to start the school year. It's a challenge and frankly can become a burden on everyone from custodians up to the principal. So Dylan says teachers are resigning because the pay doesn't match the cost of living

and they're either moving to other districts for better pay or they're just leaving altogether. And she said part of why we're seeing this right now is because of different state policies that affect conditions and the ability to teach certain subjects in the classroom. Kate, what are you hearing about resignations and how, you know, how school districts are dealing with this? Because a lot of this is coming down from the state. Sure. You know, I speaking to a principal the other day, you know, she said she has never seen the level of teacher vacancies in over a decade as a principal. And, you know, I think teachers have always known what the pay is, that it's not going to match, you know, the value that they're bringing to the community. But for so many of them, it's

these other political pressures, you know, the fear of retaliation, if something they say or teach is taken out of context, you know, scrutinizing their books, their lesson plans, for many of them, that is too much, it's too much to bear. And so districts are looking at a number of different angles. You know, some districts are hiring teachers from overseas. Broward is bringing in about 150 new teachers from the Philippines. That's on top of about 100 who are hired last year. Palm Beach is in a similar position. You know, districts are working with community colleges, trying to build out the pipeline

of new teachers. community colleges, trying to build out the pipeline of new teachers. And others are, you know, relaxing standards as far as, you know, the key is, again, on their hiring website says, you know, not certified, no problem, we'll help get you there. So they're trying to look at this at all angles. Wow. 305-995-1800. Just some indication there from our reporter Kate Payne and WLRN of the struggles that the districts are going through. We want to hear from you as well. Maybe you're a teacher heading into this new school year. Maybe you're a parent. What are your thoughts? Are you worried about whether your kid is going to have a teacher in front of their classroom? Maybe there's some other solutions that they're looking into.

Give us a call. 305-995-1800. Jeff Solichek, education reporter with the Tampa Bay Times. One piece of controversial legislation that got passed this year does threaten the survival of teachers' unions, expanding on a law that passed in 2018. I wonder if you have a sense of how that could impact attempts to fill teacher shortages going forward? Well, honestly, the teacher unions are not the teachers themselves. And while they are having the ability to negotiate contracts, and without teacher unions, you would wind up with basically no collective bargaining per se, but finding teachers is pretty much separate from that.

Teachers don't come to a district because they have a teacher's union or because they don't. In most instances, they're looking to become teachers and looking for these other factors, housing, affordability, good pay, good jobs, things like that. I don't really see the union legislation impacting teacher recruitment in that way. What are you hearing from school districts in the Tampa Bay region about staff shortages? Because we've gotten a sense just in the last minute or so, a few minutes rather, about what's happening in South Florida and further north. But what about in the Tampa Bay region?

Well, Hillsborough County, which is the biggest county in the area, has the biggest problems, as you might expect. They have, last we heard, somewhere in the 800 to 1,000 teacher vacancy range, where some of the other districts, Pasco and Pinellas in particular, are in the lower ranges, 100 to 200. And they're saying that they're seeing in those two districts, it's becoming easier for them to find teachers than it was last year. Not to say that it's perfect. And you know, the numbers fluctuate all the time, but it's better than it was last year at this time. One of the differences between Pasco and Pinellas and Hillsborough is that those two districts have a local option property tax, which voters approved, and that money is going largely to give teachers raises and Hillsboro does not have that right let's get a call in here

we've got George calling in from Davenport George you're on the air yes so my son's charter school and I'm in Polk County. I can't find a physics teacher and a calculus teacher, pre-calc teacher. And what are you hearing from the school? What's their plan to fill that gap while they look for teachers for those subjects? Because his schedule isn't made out for his electives yet. He still doesn't know what his classes are for his electives because they don't have enough teachers. They don't know.

I don't know what's going to happen. Right. George, thanks so much for your call. Indication there of a little bit of kind of stress going into the start of the year. Jeff, what about that? I mean, are you hearing about specific subjects that are particularly hard to find teachers for in the counties that you cover? Every year, it's usually the same types of classes that they have trouble finding, the math, the science, courses like that. They also have trouble finding sometimes English teachers.

It's across the board, and it also really depends on the school itself. There are some schools that are fully staffed and ready to go, whereas others are struggling to fill all their vacancies. And so it depends a lot on the campus culture and whether people want to go to those specific schools. A lot of the times it's some of the poorer schools that are harder to deal with in whatever different ways that struggle the most to find teachers. Let's get Nancy on the phone if we could. But before we do that, I just wanted to go back to that number you mentioned, Jeff, at the start of our conversation here, a thousand teacher shortages in Hillsborough County. I mean, that's pretty staggering. I wonder, just kind of tracking it year to year, how does that look compared to, say, last year?

They're fairly similar. They're not doing that great in Hillsborough. Hillsborough's got a whole host of other issues that they're dealing with politically. They have a new superintendent and a whole new staff coming in. And so the whole district seems to be up in the air on a whole number of fronts. so they they have some issues that others don't necessarily have mm-hmm okay Nancy calling in I believe from Deland Nancy you're on the air hi I'm in Volusia County I had just come in from talking with a neighbor who has three daughters, one of whom is a teacher, has been a teacher for quite some time, loves teaching, and is leaving the state because of the policies that DeSantis has put in place and the restrictions that are now being put on teachers,

she has always felt like the pay was not adequate, but she loves her job, and teachers who love teaching oftentimes feel that way. oftentimes feel that way. But I have a cousin who has retired from teaching. She taught all her life. She said in the state of Florida, she would not recommend if any young person said they were going into teaching. She said, I wouldn't do it.

Or at least not in the state of Florida, as things stand now. So the feelings are pretty raw, and there's no real compromise, it seems, and teachers are losing so much is outside of the realm of teaching that is affecting their lives. Nancy, thank you so much for your call. Yeah, hitting on some points there. Kate, if I could bring you back into this conversation. I mean, what are you hearing about where teachers are going and sort of why they're going?

The caller mentioned the point about teachers kind of leaving the state and some comments from veteran teachers there as well. What are you hearing? Yeah, I'm hearing a number of different things. As Jeff said, there are a lot of different factors that teachers are considering in their personal lives, in their professional lives. It could be where their family is, trying to get closer to family. It could be about the cost of living and the increases we're seeing, you know, with homeowners insurance, for instance. Others are, you know, trying to stay within the same district, staying within

education, but leaving a classroom teaching position because they feel that the pressures of that role are too much and others are leaving education entirely you know whether it's to work in hospitality or you know as a flight attendant there are any number of different ways that that teachers are kind of parlaying their skills into other industries you can call us at 305-995-1800. I want to go to Chris calling from Orlando. Chris, thanks for calling the Florida Roundup. You're on. Hi. Good afternoon. Yeah, I was just going to call and contribute. This topic is pretty close to our heart. My wife has been a high school counselor for going into her 19th year now.

And obviously as a counselor, there are oftentimes topics that come up that. Chris, I think, I think we lost you. I'm so sorry. I wanted to hear the end of that thought. Chris, are you, are you back? I'm told you might be back. I didn't think I was gone. I'm sorry. I wanted to hear the end of that thought. Chris, are you back? I'm told you might be back. I didn't think I was gone. I'm sorry. Please continue. Yeah, I was called.

I'm sorry. We're going to have to move on. Jeff, I want to bring you back into this briefly. On the flip side of this, policies aside, the DeSantis administration points to the fact that they have raised teacher pay. It has been a pretty large pay, the biggest pay increase for teachers in the state. And they point to that as them doing something about it. Have those raises kept up with the cost of living here? Well, no. We look at what's going on in just the Tampa area where you're talking about like a 7.3% cost of living increase and everything's really expensive. And like you're hearing down in the Keys with housing so expensive that people can't even find any.

And teachers are taking jobs over the summer, second jobs. They can't necessarily afford that. And the state money that's going towards raises until very recently was mostly going towards the lowest levels of teachers and not the veteran teachers at all, which was a very big point of contention for teachers who've been around for a long time without getting raises. So there was a lot of compression in the salary schedules as well. time without getting raises. So there was a lot of compression in the salary schedules as well. Right. So recruitment, but not so much retention. We're going to leave this part of the conversation here. We've been talking with Kate Payne, who covers education for WLRN. Kate, thanks for joining. Thanks. And Jeff Solichek, education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, will stay with

us in the next segment. Coming up after the break in the Florida Roundup, Florida approves education materials from the conservative non-profit media company Prager University. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from Florida Public Media. Welcome back to the Florida Roundup. I'm Matthew Petty in Tampa. And I'm Danny Rivero in Miami. The Florida Department of Education has approved education materials from a conservative nonprofit company, PragerU. The supplemental teaching materials include videos, cartoons, and shows that promote conservative values. include videos, cartoons, and shows that promote conservative values.

The teaching materials are optional for school districts, but the decision to approve them is raising concerns from educators. The nonprofit's founder, radio host Dennis Prager, told a Moms for Liberty conference over the summer that it's fair to say PragerU indoctrinates children. Yet Governor DeSantis has repeatedly said Florida schools should be places for education, not indoctrination, as his administration takes aim at what he calls woke ideology. The move follows a string of controversial changes to public education in Florida,

from guidelines about restroom use to new standards for teaching African-American history. I talked with Melissa Streit, who is the CEO of PragerU, and I talked to her yesterday about its educational materials. Ever since this announcement came out, there has been a pretty broad uproar in Florida about the state giving PragerU the thumbs up. A few Florida districts have stated that they do not plan to share the materials in the classroom, even if the state has given it the green light. Have any school districts you're aware of said or indicated to you that they will be showing these materials? We do know that many schools are going to be using our materials, but we believe in education choice. We believe that really the school districts and the school boards need to listen to their own constituencies and their own communities.

And given that we have such a large audience, we have a large community of people all over Florida and all over the country. And what I foresee is going to happen is that parents are going to go to the schools and say, hey, why not? Why not incorporate some of PragerU's lesson plans into the curriculum? We just say that parents and school boards need to have these kinds of conversations and make their own decisions. Florida state law now says very clearly that classrooms are not a place for indoctrination. Last month, PragerU founder Dennis Prager acknowledged that PragerU is in what he called the mind-changing business. Dennis Prager acknowledged that PragerU is in what he called the mind-changing business.

And he asked what might be a rhetorical question, but that is, what is wrong about our indoctrination? Speaking of PragerU, I'm wondering, what is your response to that question? We are in the mind-changing business. And let me ask you and your listeners, if I told you that our job is to inculcate the love of learning, to inculcate the love of country, to inculcate morality and do good, is that something that would bother our listeners? And so what is the difference really if, you know, some of it is almost semantic, right? To me, when it comes to indoctrination, the word indoctrination of teaching a one-sided ideology and not allowing another perspective, which is really what we've been seeing over the last few years in America's schools, that is the problem when you have a one-sided indoctrination. Just something I noticed because I did watch many PragerU videos before this. Many videos contain something along the lines of, we're never told this in reference to complicated history of something like slavery or immigration policy. It is a little bit of a strange thing to hear in an educational video, just because it leaves

me wondering if the primary purpose of the videos is teaching or is it pushing back on narratives that might be happening elsewhere? Yeah, I don't know how familiar you are with the current way of how most American history textbooks are written, but they're really based on much of Howard Zinn's writing. Essentially, his whole idea was to revise the way Americans learn history. And so what we're dealing with right now is undoing the damage of what the type of material that those who followed Howard Zinn has turned into America's education of American history. Ask yourself, why are we raising a nation that doesn't want to defend itself? Why are we raising a nation that is constantly saying that America is a horrible

place that is racist? Is that really a good thing for our children? Do you think China and Russia are teaching their kids to hate their countries? And I want to emphasize, I don't think that America is perfect today. And I don't think it was perfect yesterday. We have a lot of problems in America today, and we have many blemishes in American history. I'm not saying not to teach those blemishes. I am saying we do need to teach slavery. We do need to teach that there was terrible anti-Semitism. We do need to teach that there were problems in America, but it is not the only thing that we need to teach. We also need to teach that Western civilization developed America into one of the most, I would argue, the most prosperous society on planet Earth. We want our kids to know that too. We want them to

appreciate the things that have made America great. And just for our listeners, Marissa is referring to Howard Zinn, the author of A People's History of the United States. Marissa, following up on what you were saying, it sounds like what you're saying is you're hoping the PragerU materials used in the classroom will serve as somewhat of a counterbalance to other things that are being taught? I think that ultimately, when teachers decide how they're going to bring our lessons into their classrooms, they're going to have to make their own decision. And that was Melissa Streitz, CEO of PraUse, talking with my colleague Danny Rivero there last night.

Joining us now to talk about this more is Ana Ceballos with the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, Tallahassee Bureau. She's been covering the story. And we also welcome back Tampa Bay Times education reporter Jeff Solichek. You can join the conversation too. 305-995-1800 is the number to hear. What do you think about these new materials being approved for supplemental use in Florida classrooms? 305-995-1800. Send us a tweet. We're at Florida Roundup. Ana, thanks for joining us. And I wanted to start with you and ask if you could just kind

of explain for our listeners briefly what this educational material is and who is it really aimed at? Yes. So what we found is that most of this content is really geared toward young children and high school students. up with you know colorful animation like really emotive music some child characters who go on adventures time traveling um and they're really short and convenient to watch and so when you go and look at this you know you'll see high profile conservative personalities like Candace Owens or Will Witt who is the founder of a conservative outlet here in Florida called Florida Standard just narrating cartoons or five minute video history lessons and story time hours for young children including a children's book called Autotale Autotales that follows like a dog through the adventures of, you know, visiting places like the White House or, you know, specific monuments in the country. So it's really just a really short cartoonish videos that are really branded to kids

and that have lessons that share pretty pro-American type of message that is aligned pretty much with conservative talking points that you see in mainstream politics or conservative media. PragerU is not an accredited educational institution, so what do we know about how this organization's content got approved by the Board of Education? about how this organization's content got approved by the Board of Education? So the process by which it was approved remains a little bit of a known. What we do know, though, is that in July 5th, PragerU content was officially approved by the Florida Department of Education. We had the opportunity to also interview the CEO of PragerU, who was interviewed for the show earlier.

And she did tell me last week that the conversation started over the summer. But it still remains unclear as to what channels it went through, because the Florida Department of Education told me that they did not submit a bid for consideration for the 2023-2024 school year, which is about to start. So it's really unclear as to what the process, what process they followed to get the content approval. They only said that they had mutual friends in common. They wouldn't say who those mutual friends were and how they came about into the radar of the governor, the administration and the Florida Department of Education. They did say, though, that, you know, they have become aware that, for example, the governor shows his kids these videos and through mutual friends, they knew that the content was, I guess, of the liking of the administration.

I wonder too, I mean, Dennis Prager is a fairly influential force in conservative politics. And, you know, many of Governor DeSantis' more polarizing policies have been rolled out over the last few years as his presidential campaign took shape. What is your sense, Ana, of the politics around the Department of Education approving this content and I guess the timing of it as well? Right. The timing is kind of coming as it, you know, it almost seems like a snowball of policies are coming out of the Department of Education as of late. At least it's making a lot of headlines, even if it's a minority, right, of the policies are being approved. But they're just getting so much attention that even the entire country seems to be talking about all these decisions. And, you know, this, this nonprofit started in 2009. So it's been out there. The only thing is that the timing

seems to be now where DeSantis is prioritizing the fight on quote-unquote woke and making sure that you know that the education schools in Florida are not not introducing any instruction that would persuade students to believe a certain quote-unquote partisan narrative but what we're seeing is that a lot of the things that the Department of Education has been approving seem to be in alignment with the views of the governor in a way that critics now say, well, who's indoctrinating whom, right? And I think that that's kind of the disconnect between what the state law says, you know, pretty clearly, like we state instruction should not be indoctrinating students or persuading students to believe any viewpoint. And so the question becomes, like, what are we like, what is this content accomplishing then?

You can call us at 305-995-1800. I want to go to the phones. Elise in Tallahassee, you're on. Yes, hi. I teach in Leon County, Florida, or I have taught full-time. I'm not teaching full-time at the moment. But in regards to the curriculum, I mean, even if you just look at the, you know, the website for PragerU, it's visual. I guess if a picture is worth a thousand words, what you see is a young white male at the top of a little mountain holding a, you know, giant American flag. And then beneath him you have, like, you know, a white female, a black female, a black male. I mean, it's just really it's really concerning. And I have a background in history, the Holocaust and this whole direction that this governor has been taking our state, you know, this last couple of years has been concerning to me for some time because it just really reminds me a lot of, you know, the indoctrination that happened, you know, prior to World War II and Nazi Germany.

And that's what I see happening. And it's very concerning. And I won't teach history or social sciences for that reason, because I don't want to be in that position. Thank you so much, Elise. We appreciate the call. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from Florida Public Radio. Jeff, I want to bring you back into this, reporter with the Tampa Bay Times. PragerU materials that were just approved for use in Florida, they are optional. CEO Melissa Streit told us that many school districts will be using our materials. Do we have a sense of how many school districts might end up using them? Have any said that they will be using them?

I have not heard of any that have said they will be. And in fact, I've heard of a handful who have said they will not be using them and they will not consider them unless they're submitted an official bid requesting for review. them unless they're submitted an official bid requesting for review. And so, Jeff, we've heard a lot about parental rights in education in Florida over the last couple of years. What does the introduction of this material, you know, potential be being used in the classrooms? What does it mean for parents and how does that fit into the debate that's been going on about what books are allowed in school libraries and in you know and bookshelves and classrooms well it's interesting

you mentioned that because there's the group florida freedom to read and you know they've been fighting to keep books in schools and going through processes to challenge things to so that all parents have a voice they have actually gone on their websites and started posting opt-out forms saying, don't like PragerU? Make sure that if your school brings it in that you fill out this opt-out form saying you don't want this in your class, you don't want your child presented with this information. So the parental viewpoints are out there and it's just going to come down to whether one side is listened to or another.

Right. And we do know many parents in Florida are in support of this, these materials. Oh, absolutely. There are many in favor, but there are a lot of people who are still fighting, like you said, over books and other materials. And this is just another area where I think you're going to find that people are going to debate this pretty hotly. Want to go back to the phones. Now you can call us at 305-995-1800. We have Terry calling from St. St.

Petersburg. Terry, thanks for calling your own. Hi, good afternoon. I just was listening to the show and listening to the PragerU official and realizing that her whole reason for being, her whole argument is predicated on the assumption or the belief that American public schools are teaching students to hate America.

Those were her words, and that is patently false. There's no way that teaching in passing the problems in the country that still exist is teaching people to hate America. Yes, we are the great American experiment with democracy. We're arguably the greatest, most prosperous country in the world

in many ways based on our system of government and our capitalist society. Problems made, okay. So that's basically what I have to say. Thank you so much for the call, Terry. And before we're out, I want to bring you back in. Do you have anything to follow up with Terry? I mean, what have the critics of this, this curriculum said? I mean, a lot of them echo what Terry is saying, like, these

implications about what's being taught in the classroom is not true. Yeah, I actually had an interesting conversation with a researcher at Kansas State University. A few years ago, she actually watched all these videos and to do a case study pretty much on the content. And after doing that, her takeaway was, you know, that there is a very strong agenda and that the the agenda is usually an us versus them, meaning, you know, the pro-American conservatives versus immoral leftists. So in quote unquote,

and it seems to be much of what is driving a lot of the debate here in education. And I know, sorry, we're going to have to leave the conversation there. We've been speaking with Anna Ceballos with the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay times, Tallahassee bureau,

Jeff Solichek with the Tampa Bay times. We'll stick with us in the next segment. After the break, thousands of parents are applying for vouchers to send their kids to private schools after a massive expansion of the program. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from Florida Public Radio. Welcome back to the Florida Roundup. I'm Danny Rivero in Miami. And I'm Matthew Petty in Tampa. Back in March, Governor DeSantis signed a major expansion of school vouchers into law.

School choice advocates hailed the move as empowering parents to pick the education they want for their children. But critics worry about the price tag. Estimates for the Family Empowerment Scholarship, as it's called, are in the billions. scholarship as it's called are in the billions. Step Up for Students, the organization that administers state scholarships, anticipates tens of thousands of more applications for the vouchers which can be used to pay for private school, homeschooling and other options. So who's taking advantage of the vouchers and what impact could it have on the funding for public education? Well Jeff Solichek, education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, is back with us. And we also welcome to the program Doug Tuthill, president of Step Up for Students. We want to hear your questions and comments as well. What are your thoughts about

Florida's voucher program? Maybe you're one of the thousands of parents who has signed up to send your child to a private school or for other reasons. Give us a call 305-995-1800. That's 305-995-1800. You can also send us a tweet. We are at Florida Roundup. Doug Tuthill, talk us through this. How many applications have you received so far and how does it compare to last year? Well, last year we served about 250,000 students. This year I'm anticipating about 350,000. So we'll grow about 100,000 students this year. Applications in the system. Sorry, I was going to say, where are you at so far? As of today, we've approved about 365,000 applications.

Now, just because a family has an approved scholarship doesn't necessarily mean they use it. One of the things I've been telling folks is that it takes a while for supply to catch up with demand. And so schools can't, private schools can't, you know, magically open up new seats overnight. So I think you're going to find it's going to take a couple of years before the supply side in private schools and in homeschool communities catch up in order to deal with the full implications of HP1. catch up in order to deal with the full implications of HP1. So just to clarify, when you say you anticipate serving 350,000 students this year, whereas last year it was 250,000, you're saying there may be more people who apply and approve for those scholarships, or they're just not going to be able to use them necessarily?

Yeah, I anticipate that we'll probably end up approving probably 425,000 to 450,000. But it's going to take a while for people to be able to find the right fit for their kid. And so I think it'll take a couple of years for more seats to open up in private schools, more homeschool communities to get organized to handle more kids. So I think you're going to find probably, you know, 50,000 to 75,000 at least of the families who get a scholarship don't necessarily use it this year, but maybe perhaps in future years they will. you're going to find probably you know 50 to 75 000 at least of the families who get a scholarship don't necessarily use it this year but maybe perhaps in future years they will i mean so that's a big increase on last year how are you coping with the surge in applications

money are you keeping up with it all oh we're very very busy uh we've added um over 100 folks to help us deal with call center questions um so yeah, it's been very, very intense, but we're very excited. The families are very excited because it's a chance to try to find a better fit for their kids. So it's just a very exciting time. I started teaching in Florida in 1977, so I've been around a while. And I don't know that I've ever seen an opening of the school year quite this exciting. Families are really excited to take a look at all the options out there, not just our program, but more magnet schools, charter schools, virtual schools. Florida is really lucky because we have so many options for parents. It really is a state where families are moving in from out of state because they know there's so many options for their kids.

So I'm just really pleased for the families. And I'm also pleased for teachers. You know, I taught in the state for a long time. I was president of two teachers unions. And I'm seeing lots of teachers excited about the chance to start their own schools, start their own mini schools, start their own micro schools. So you're seeing a lot of innovation on the teacher side, on the supply side, as well as a lot of excitement on the demand side from parents. Let's get a call in here. The number is 305-995-1800. If you have some thoughts about the school voucher expansion,

maybe personal experience with it, but let's go to Shelley who is calling in from St. Petersburg. Shelley, you're on the air. Hi, thank you. It is my understanding that these vouchers for the school of your choice do not pay 100% of the tuition for the private school. So if the school of my choice for my child would be a $20,000 a year tuition, the voucher is not going to cover $20,000. It's going to cover $7,000 to $9,000, somewhere in that neighborhood. Is that correct? And if so,

the wealthy parents who are already funding their children to these schools could take advantage of the voucher and basically get $7,500 from the state where a low-income family is still not going to be able to afford the difference between the amount of the voucher and the amount of the tuition, so they do not have school choice. Shelley, thank you so much for your call. Doug, so what about that? I mean, just kind of clarify for us what the amount that parents can apply for, like how much would they get from the voucher and what would it cover? Well, first of all, we have about 22 years worth of experience. It's not like the program started yesterday. The expansion in the spring was an expansion,

but like I said, we've been giving scholarships to low-income families since the first law passed in 2001. So we have over 22 years worth of experience on the very assertion that Shelly made. And the good news is that she's incorrect. It turns out that there's a lot of diversity in the private school community in Florida. And there are a lot of schools

in which the tuition and fees, this year it's gonna be average about $7,700. It depends on what grade level you're in and also depends on the cost of living of the county. But the reason we're growing so dramatically is because there are lots of schools that do allow these families to be able to afford their schools at seventy seven hundred dollars. There's also a lot of schools that are more high end that have their own scholarship programs. I have a friend who runs Admiral Farragut in St. Pete. It's about $25,000, $26,000 a year there, but his school actually takes about 15 to 20 scholarship kids every year because they want to have a nice, diverse background in their schools. The average family income in our program historically has

been about $40,000 a year. I don't think that's going to change much for the first couple years. If you're wealthy, you're able to afford a very affluent house in a very affluent community. And you actually like your neighborhood school. It's a school that's serving primarily wealthy families. And so I'm not sure that a lot of families who spend a lot of money, if you spend a million dollars to buy a house because you want the school in that neighborhood,

you're probably not going to move. So we're primarily seeing continuing to middle-class and low-income families are the ones that are primarily using the scholarship based on the data we have today. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from Florida Public Radio. Jeff Solichek, reporter with the Tampa Bay Times, want to bring you into this. proposed and when it was passing through the legislature was that this is somewhat of a zero-sum game where more money for vouchers equals less money for public schools. Is that the case as this program really expands and takes off right now? It's kind of hard to tell in some ways

because school districts are still trying to assess exactly how many students they might be losing as a result of this and how the money will flow through them. The budget cycle has been changed so that there's a lot more money that's coming through the state funding program that's set aside specifically for vouchers. So it looks like there's a lot more money in there, but it's also just flowing through. So the legislature also set aside 400 some odd million dollars for school districts that see that they are losing funding as a result of the vouchers and the students leaving. So everything is still kind of in flux as everybody is developing their budgets, and it's kind of early to tell whether it's really going to be a big problem or not. I know several school districts were very much wanting there to be like a line item that says this is for the vouchers. So that

way they at least know how they can plan. And that may still be something that's working through the system. And Doug, Todd Hill, I want to come back to you. You mentioned the average household income for people that are applying for these vouchers is somewhere around $40,000. But there is technically not an income cap. Is that right? I mean, have you seen very wealthy families take advantage of this? You know, what they would have been paying out of pocket, now they're getting essentially a subsidy? The majority of the applications that we're receiving today are basically the same kind of demographic that we've seen historically. There hasn't been a big influx of lots of wealthy people.

Like I said before, a lot of people in Florida who have good money, who are able to buy a house in a very affluent neighborhood, and they bought a house because of that school in that neighborhood. There are affluent families in upscale private schools. A lot of those private schools don't take the scholarships. And so most of the schools that take the scholarships are working class schools, schools that serve lower income families. I do think, like I said before, over the next couple of years, you eventually will see more of the upscale schools start to take more of the scholarships. I think it's going to take a couple of years for all that to play out. The other thing I would say about money is obviously the money follows the child. So if a child leaves the Hillsborough School

District and goes to a private school, then eventually that Hillsborough School District not only gets paid for that student, that's also true if the child moves for other reasons, et cetera. The good news for the taxpayers is, as Jeff knows, it costs us about $15,000 to $16,000 a year for the taxpayers to educate a child in a district school. As I mentioned earlier, the average scholarship this year is about $7,700. And $7,700 is about half of what it costs to educate a child in a district school. And so from a taxpayer's perspective and a budget perspective, we're saving a lot of money for the state. And hopefully that state uses that money to reinvest in more kids in the district schools. And Jeff, I want to bring you back in.

We only have a few more seconds to go. But how much money is the state of Florida putting towards this voucher program this year? And how does that tally with the estimated costs? program this year? And how does that tally with the estimated costs? Well, it's about supposed to be $2.7 billion with another $400 and some odd million set aside for making school districts whole if they're starting to see trouble with their budgets. And as far as the numbers are going right now, I'm hearing that it's supposed to be within budget. Doug would probably know the answer to that more. Yeah, I agree with Jeff. I don't think there's going to be a budget problem. I think the money that was allocated is going to be sufficient to cover everything. So I agree with Jeff.

Thank you. Thank you both. We're going to leave the conversation there. We've been speaking with Jeff Solichak throughout the hour, education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. And also this segment, we were talking with Doug Tuthill, president of Step Up for Students. Jeff, Doug, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for inviting us. And that's our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WJCT Public Media in Jacksonville and WLRN Public Media in Miami. Hear the chats. And Bridget O'Brien, our producers. WLRN's vice president of radio and our Technical Director is Peter Mayers.

Engineering help from Doug Peterson, Charles Michaels, and Jackson Harp. Richard Ives answers the phones. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. I'm Danny Rivero. And I'm Matthew Petty. Thanks for calling in and listening. Have a great weekend everyone