Anti-public-ed train bill HB 7067 goes to floor vote tomorrow, March 6, 2020, in the FL House. Tell every Representative in the FL House to vote NO on this bad bill stuffed with at least twelve unrelated concepts.
HB 7067 is catastrophic to public schools because it robs hundreds of millions of public tax dollars directly from public school funding to pay for private scholarship/vouchers to mostly religious schools that are free to discriminate. Take action now!
HB 7067 deserves a NO vote for the following reasons:
- Does not focus on serving low income students. Automatic escalator morphs the Family Empowerment Scholarship/Voucher (FES) in 4 years to a middle-class entitlement for families of 4 earning $103K per year increasing every year until virtually everyone is eligible.
- Florida’s median salary is $55,462 or 215% of the Federal poverty guidelines, currently well below the 300% cap of $77K per family of four.
- Without another vote to stop it, this escalator continues unabated every year until everyone is qualified to receive the FES Voucher to attend a private religious school with zero accountability.
- Facilitates an exponential transfer of public-school dollars into private hands. In 2019-20 FES vouchers cost districts $103.5M dollars. By 2024-25 FES vouchers could cost districts nearly $1 billion dollars per year.
- During the 2019-20 school year alone school districts have transferred the following public funds to private FES Voucher Schools: Miami Dade: $22M; Broward: $10M; Orange $11M; Volusia $3M; Hillsborough $6M; Palm Beach $4M for a total transfer of $103.5M statewide. All but two Florida districts were affected.
- NO enrollment cap on expansion of FES Vouchers funded by our public-school dollars. Next year vouchers will grow from 17,724 to 46,626, increasing by nearly 30K students each year in perpetuity.
You get the picture.
Use your voice. Tell the Florida House to vote NO for HB 7067.
Sources:
HB 7067 Staff Analysis
Cost by District FES Scholarship/Voucher, 2019-20 FEFP 3RD Calculation, Page 7
Median Household Income: FL
