It appears as though quite a few parents who chose to send their children to Florida’s voucher schools, as well as many of the teachers who work there, are regretting those decisions.
Teachers and parents of students at those schools, which are publicly funded, have filed 238 complaints over the past 18 months. Many of those complaints are quite disturbing and involve student safety and security, reports the Tampa Bay Times.
The Orlando Sentinel found in a previous investigation the following problems with some voucher schools in the state:
- Teachers with criminal records
- Falsified fire and health inspections
- Refusals to serve children with disabilities
- Refusals to serve children with gay parents
Some of the current complaints include students hitting each other, a custodian substituting for a teacher, educational neglect, no lunch provided, and no place to eat.
The Orlando Sentinel is trying to investigate how these complaints are being handled by Florida’s education department but is being charged more than $10,000 for the public records. In 2017, the publication paid about $8 per file. Now the state is charging $43 per file.
“Either the state wants to make it prohibitively expensive for the public to know what’s going on inside these schools. Or this administration is simply too incompetent to do its job,” author Scott Maxwell wrote in his guest column.
Maxwell and the Orlando Sentinel are demanding that voucher schools be held to the same level of accountability as public schools. They have successfully sued Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration twice for access to public records and appear to be willing to do so again.
