Educational Justice For All
A Position Paper of the Florida Catholic Conference
True educational justice requires that all parents
must be liberated from financial burdens in order to choose schools they
deem are best suited for their children. Lower and middle-income parents
either do not have the financial wherewithal to pay tuition at many
nonpublic schools, or make great financial sacrifices to do so. They
deserve some benefit, be it an educational certificate, corporate tax
scholarship or tax credit, from their hard earned money that is taxed at
the local, state and federal levels.
Eligibility for school-choice programs should not be limited to
children in public schools. Financial hardship and the domestic
difficulties that follow from it are not limited to families of public
school children. Approximately 85 percent of Catholic school families
nationally rely on mothers and fathers both working outside the home in
order to financially support their children's education. In addition,
many nonpublic school parents moonlight and sacrifice their needs in order
to select schools that not only offer the best academic programs for their
children, but are in keeping with their moral code, value system,
spirituality and disciplinary approach.
The annual household income is less than $40,000 for 55 percent of
families whose children are in K-8 Catholic schools. Approximately
one-third of the students in Florida Catholic schools are minorities. And
thousands of students enrolled in Catholic schools throughout the state
qualify for free and reduced lunch under the federal Title I Program.
School-choice programs that do not address the financial-justice issue
for nonpublic school parents, especially those who are lower income and
middle income, create a financial penalty for their families. As a
result, financial pressures can follow and force parents to work longer
hours.
School-choice legislation should be crafted with a holistic approach to
create educational justice for as many parents as possible. When this
happens, potential familial problems stemming from household income
stretched beyond limit are headed off, and parents, as the first and
foremost educators of their children, may freely exercise their
school-choice right without financial burden.
School-choice legislation that truly creates educational justice for
all helps to strengthen families by empowering parents without financial
penalty to select the schools that are best for their children. Such
legislation plants the seeds for our youth to become responsibly educated
adults who respect, cherish and care for themselves and others so they
will develop into generous men and women of high noble ideals.
