Textbooks For Nonpublic School Children
A Position Paper of the Florida Catholic Conference

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   The Florida Federation of Catholic Parents supports the loan of textbooks to nonpublic school students.  This would be good public policy because:

• All students should be provided with the professional and material resources appropriate to a learning process that will prepare them to live and work in the challenging world of the twenty-first century.

• Seventeen other states currently have similar programs for children in private and parochial schools. (Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia)

• Government at all levels, acting in partnership with parents, has a responsibility to provide adequate professional and material resources to assist all children to attain a quality education.  This includes, but is not limited to, textbooks and other instructional materials.

• Policies can be crafted so as to not mix church and state.  Textbooks that are religious in nature would be excluded.

• Such a policy would not suggest using public money to fund private institutions.  Students would be the direct beneficiaries, since they are the ones to whom the textbooks would be loaned.

• When services that are aimed at improving the educational environment are available to students and teachers in public schools, these services should also be available to students and teachers in private and religious schools.  These individuals should not be penalized for choosing to enroll or work in these schools since they also serve the common good of our nation.

• "An educated populace is essential to the political and economic health of any community, and a state's effort to assist parents in meeting the rising costs of educational expenses plainly serves the secular purpose of insuring that the state's citizenry is well educated." [U. S. Supreme Court Decision, Mueller v. Allen (1983)]

• Parents deserve some benefit from tax dollars they pay for education.  More than 233,000 students attend nonpublic schools in Florida, saving the State approximately $1.06 billion annually.  The loan of textbooks to these students is a sound investment for the State.

• The United States Supreme Court has upheld this right on several occasions. [Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education (1930); Board of Education of Central School District No. 1 v. Allen (1968); and Wolman v. Walter (1977)].
  
   

  January 2002