Parental Choice in
Education
A Position Paper of the Florida
Catholic Conference
The Florida Catholic Conference supports parents' fundamental right
to select the schools that they deem are best suited for their children
without financial penalty. Parents are their children’s first teachers and
as such, are the foremost educators of their offspring.
The Second Vatican Council has articulated the role of parents as
primary, irreplaceable and inalienable and it would be wrong for anyone to
usurp that unique responsibility. No school choice law or policy rule
should overlook, ignore and disrespect the role of the family. A state’s
vested interest in educational policies should not supercede the rights of
parents.
The state, our local communities, and the Church have an obligation
to empower and assist all parents to exercise their parental choice
rights. This includes parents living in poverty, who have few, if any
options, parents of the working-middle class who make financial sacrifices
and even parents with considerable financial resources.
But parental choice can’t be realized unless parents have the
freedom to select schools of their choice, be it public, private or
religious. Efforts are pending within the legislative and judicial
branches of government to preclude religious schools from participating in
parental-choice programs based primarily on two issues. The first issue
has been initiated on the grounds that indirect public aid to sectarian
schools has a primary effect of advancing religion and as such, violates
the doctrine of Separation of Church & State. However, it is only
in our recent history that the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights
has been misinterpreted as a way to limit or even prohibit government
support to families who choose for their children to attend Catholic and
other religious schools. The Establishment Clause was, in fact, intended
to guard against the establishment of an official government religion to
protect religious practice from the intrusion of government.
The second issue is Catholic and other nonpublic schools are not
accountable like public schools. Catholic schools are accountable in their
own right. Our schools exist in the free market place, operating under
ultimate accountability, which is to parents. The fact that most Florida
Catholic Schools are near or at capacity and have waiting lines for those
who want to attend is a testament to our schools being accountable to
parents. In addition, our schools must be fiscally accountable in order to
exist, are accredited by the Florida Catholic Conference Accreditation
Program at the K-8 level and by the Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools in grades 9-12, assess students with a nationally norm-reference
test in each subject of elementary and middle-school curricula, adhere to
state and local governing provisions in health, safety, sanitation,
attendance, immunizations, environmental, fire and building codes, as well
as number of days in operation. At the federal level, Catholic schools
comply with anti-discriminatory laws based on race, asbestos regulation,
and applicable sections of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
and the American with Disabilities Act when enrolling children with
disabilities.
For parents to have a full range of choice options, the rich
diversity of public, private and religious schools should be respected. If
religious schools were to be precluded from participating in “choice”
programs, then parents would be denied the right to select schools that
are consistent with their spirituality, moral code and overall value
system.
Education policymakers do society a great service when they
recognize that what is truly in the best interest of children is not
simply a strong governmental school system, but a strong educational
system that includes government, religious and private schools.
And for educational justice to be achieved, it is incumbent on our
policy leaders to craft legislation for as many parents as possible,
including parents who support the public educational system through their
hard-earned tax dollars and pay nonpublic school tuition too. It is in
this spirit that the Florida Catholic Conference supports legislation that
is equitable and does not support policies that disenfranchise nonpublic
school students.
Parents who enroll their children in Catholic and other nonpublic
schools have less disposable income, when factoring tuition, than their
public school counterparts with the same socio-economic status.
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.
For more than one-half of families whose children are in K-8
Catholic schools, their annual household income is approximately $40,000.
Nearly one-third of the students in Florida Catholic schools are
minorities. And more than 3,500 students enrolled in Catholic schools
throughout Florida qualify for free and reduced lunch under the National
School Lunch Act, which is the poverty threshold for public school
students to receive a Corporate Tax Scholarship in Florida.
The Corporate Tax Scholarship
Program should be based on need so Catholic and other nonpublic school
children from poor-working families can be eligible for a scholarship too.
Including nonpublic school children as beneficiaries of parental-choice
programs is not only fair and just, but also good fiscal policy. The
95,949 children in the 233 Florida Catholic schools minimally saves the
state an estimated $1.3 billion in nonrecurring capital costs and $546
million annually in recurring operating costs.
For every child educated in a Catholic school, the state realizes a
minimal savings of $6,000 annually. This is especially significant
following the adoption of the constitutional amendment for class size
mandates.
Unfortunately, some Catholic school children have been forced to
transfer to public schools because school-choice legislation continues to
exclude them from parental-choice scholarship programs. A year ago more
than 31,000 nonpublic school students transferred to public schools. The
economic recession is cited predominantly as the rationale for the large
number of transfer students.
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 responsible educated adults who respect, cherish and care
for themselves and others so they will develop into generous men and women
of high and noble ideals.
