The state education commissioner and school choice advocates have clapped back at the Florida Education Association’s lawsuit alleging the state’s school voucher program is unconstitutional.
Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas during a Florida Board of Education meeting in Miami Thursday said the union “continues to waste members’ dues and taxpayer dollars on litigation that does nothing to advance student achievement or strengthen our schools.”
He called the statewide union a “special interest group” on a “never-ending quest to harm students and families in our great state.”
“It has been said, if you give a clown a stage, they will perform, and last week’s press conference put on by the Florida Education Association was nothing short of a circus act that we have all grown tired of,” Kamoutsas said during his report.
Parents and the FEA argued in a 39-page filing in state trial court in Leon County last week that state dollars funding private school vouchers don’t conform to the Florida’s Constitution’s requirement for “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” They announced the lawsuit during a news conference in front of the Florida Capitol.
“This lawsuit is against the more than 530,000 students who are participating in a state scholarship program and it is also against 440,000 students who are enrolled in charter schools across this state,” Kamoutsas said.
If the FEA’s ideas were enacted, Kamoutsas said, they “would have an enormously detrimental impact” on students. He compared it to the COVID-era lawsuit when the union resisted the DeSantis administration’s reopening of public schools.
The FEA wants the court to declare the scholarship programs and charter schools “as currently administered” unconstitutional.
“When public funds are used to educate a child, that child is entitled to the same level of educational opportunities, the same quality standards, and the same basic protections,” the FEA argued.
The Capitol
Moments after the commissioner made his argument, outside the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee representatives of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education think tank argued against the lawsuit.
“We don’t have to choose between supporting our public schools or giving parents educational choice. We can do both,” Foundation for Florida’s Future Director Patricia Levesque said.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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