Posted on 05/29/2024 7:52:31 AM PDT by Twotone
As Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed school choice initiatives, leading to a spike in charter and private school enrollments, public schools are shutting down.
Across the state, public school enrollment is declining. Duval County Public School District, the sixth-largest school district in Florida and 20th largest in the country, is now considering campus closures due to dramatic dips in their enrollment.
Broward County Public Schools, Florida’s second largest school district, has evaluated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years. Miami-Dade county has also experienced a substantial decline in enrollment rates. Of the roughly 68,000 privately enrolled students from 2019-2023, more than a third of them came from Duval, Broward and Miami counties, according to data from the Florida Department of Education.
“If your product is better, you’ll be fine. The problem is, they are a relic of the past — a monopolized system where you have one option,” Chris Moya, a Florida lobbyist representing charter schools, told Politico. “And when parents have options, they vote with their feet.”
In March of 2023, DeSantis signed legislation promoting school choice for parents and students. The bill eliminated restrictions based on financial eligibility and got rid of school enrollment caps.
In 2023, private school enrollment from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade increased by nearly 29,000 students from 2022, according to findings from the Florida Department of Education. In 2023, 31 Florida school districts had 10% or more of their total pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students enrolled in private schools, according to the same report.
School choice and private school enrollment has been steadily rising over the last decade. Since 2013, over 600 new private schools were established in Florida, and about 120,000 students opted for private education over public, according to the Florida Department of Education.
Florida public schools, including Duval County schools, have faced scrutiny for promoting unpopular social causes like critical race theory and barring graduation ceremonies from being held in churches. In February 2023, Duval County had to cancel a survey that asked students as young as 10 years old about their sexual activity and gender identity.
In 2022, five public school boards were flipped by conservatives in Florida. As a result, Miami-Dade County, Sarasota County, Duval County, Martin County and Clay County then had conservative majorities on their school boards.
IMHO, this is truly a significant development. Its an excellent experiment in education which the rest of the country can learn from.
Public education was a very progressive/left notion in the 19th century, based on the condition of American culture and society of the time. America is no longer the same, and it has developed into a bloated, highly monopolistic (and thus corrupt) institution.
The arguments in favor of public/govt education 125 years ago definitely do NOT exist today and Americans need choice and other options.
Jimmie Carter’s payback to the teachers unions, the Department of Education, is killing the Public Schools!
The Department dictates to the schools what they will teach/indoctrinate. Turning out obedient little ignorant trolls, unable to compete in the world.
Florida is showing the way.
Hopefully this trend will catch on everywhere...I’m pretty sure there will be lots of public school teachers who will leave their posts and help run homeschools, homeschool pods, and hybrid schools. Public schools ,as they are now, starting to die.
id like to see the same happen here in CA. it would be nice to see most of public education here in CA close up shop.
Competition will kill the failed government schools and they will provide a much better product. I for one think the destruction of public schools is one of the best things that could happen in our country.
Dunno about Duval County, but if their public skool system is like the rest of the country, the "campus closures" are because of incompetent, lazy, can't-do-any-other-job teachers and admin. If they're closing schools, it's the school's fault.
Clean up your act, expel stupid, unruly career students, and do your job.
I work for a school district in Texas. Our admin people are scared shitless of school choice. Luckily, I can retire any time.
Close them up. What to do with the property? Valuable real estate. Cambodia turned them into prisons. Floor plans were very conducive.
Government schools every time.
Public schools sounds so nice and friendly.
Government schools.
If an educated citizenry is a thing you want, a child’s basic education shouldn’t depend on the families wealth. A quality, publicly funded (when necessary) education for all kids is a good thing.
As always, the devil is in the details.
What we have now doesn’t work for 1/2 the country.
Public funding for private schools are fine, until . . .
What about a Madrassa? A Yeshiva? A Fundamentalist Christian? A Prosperity Gospel? A NAMBLA? A Rainbow PUSH?
Not sure how to to fix it, but CHOICE in education is a good thing.
My Mind - My Choice.
Public schools don’t teach important things, they teach the state assessment test and SWJ stuff. I found out last week, one of our HS teach how to protest. So, the focus is wrong.
Being part of an inner city school, what the attempt is, is to de-feralize the kids coming into the classroom for the first time.
It’s not just school choice that’s helping Florida education, although it a huge part of it. DeSantis took on the teachers’ unions and put a leash on them too. Plus he put the brakes on DEI and the groomers and you have education reform across the board now.
Good idea. When the majority career-criminal-students get busted for crimes, they'll feel right at home.
What to do with the property?
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Sell or lease it to private and charter schools. The inability to find and/or fund buildings suitable for schools is one of the limiting factors in their establishment.
Liberals hate school choice. To them, freedom means the ability to kill the unborn, but have no control over education if they survive the abortion matrix.
“Government Education” for your kids consists of a building, politicians, Union bosses and socialist and lgbtq indoctrination. I have sat in on a number of classrooms at Public Schools. No REAL education goes on.
Of that “Experiment”...........little is left. Pretty soon, just empty buildings looking for a user. The parents have prevailed and their kids are the WINNERS.
Because the teacher’s unions are they means of control, and the brainwashing of children as well.
This both takes away their access to children and the financial means to influence adults.
People who are not familiar with Catholic schools would be very surprised to know the large fraction of students who are paying reduced (often to zero) tuition. I argue that government funding, extracted from We the People at gunpoint (don't pay your taxes, see what happens ...) is NEVER necessary and should be abolished.
WINNING! Socialist Indoctrination Centers being closed down.
DEI banned from college campuses.
We have further to go....we need to restore ideological balance in university faculties and we need to fire a whole bunch of leftist admins, but the Left’s total control over education is finally being rolled back.
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