Following are excerpts from a June, 2005 article on the previous effort to destroy the Florida public school system and the US Constitutional decree for the separation of church and state. The good guys won that round because of the Florida constitution.
The result? Jeb Bush and his right-wing zealot cronies are now attempting to re-write the Florida constitution, apparently believing that if you don't like losing the game, change the rules. Even worse, they are using misleading language in two ballot initiatives (7 & 9) to do it - so even if one ammendment fails, the other may make it past duped voters.
From June, 2005:
...in a case that will determine whether the state can continue diverting much-needed tax dollars from neighborhood public schools to private, mostly church-run schools.
In November 2004, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program represented a scheme by which government funds were used to support religious institutions, in violation of Florida's 137-year-old Constitutional prohibition specifically barring aid to religious institutions. The appeals court upheld two earlier decisions striking down vouchers that were issued by a three-judge panel of the same court and by the Leon County Circuit Court.
"What is at stake in this case is one of the very essential founding principles of our government - that no one should be forced through the tax system to finance religious institutions whose beliefs they may not share," said attorney Ron Meyer, who is serving as co-counsel in the lawsuit. "Of course, it is profoundly important that parents have the right to send their children, at their own expense, to schools of their choice, including schools that share their religious values. However, taxpayers should not be forced to finance religious institutions with which they do not agree."
For the whole story: http://www.aclu.org/religion/govtfunding/16266prs20050606.html
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Just in case any of you progressives are actually interested in "progress," please go take a look at the Nation's Report Card scores for the trend in Florida's 4th Grade Reading Scores:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/
Florida has made a huge amount of progress since 1998 in this key measure of learning, so much so, that Florida's Hispanic students now outscore the statewide averages of 13 different states for ALL STUDENTS, and Florida's African American students outscore the statewide average for ALL STUDENTS in LA and MS, and are within a hair's breath of California's average.
That should make for some interesting dinner-party conversation in Beverly Hills.
In any case, check out the numbers for yourself, you don't need to take my word on it. Governor Bush put in a comprehensive set of education reforms, private choice was an important part of those, and the percent of Florida kids learning how to read in the early grades has improved substantially.
This ought to be a set of reforms that everyone can support, whether you are a liberal, conservative, a libertarian or a vegetarian.
http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/18/ill-have-what-florida-is-having/
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