Florida may need more private school options for working-class families

Step Up For Students (SUFS) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help low-income parents access the schools that best meet their children’s needs. We do this, in part, by providing tax-credit funded scholarships to low-income families to help them pay the tuition and fees at qualified private schools.

While our scholarships help disadvantaged families afford private schools, our mission is not to promote private schools over homeschooling, charter schools, virtual schools, neighborhood schools or magnet schools. We just want parents to have a full array of educational choices to them, and having access to private schools — especially faith-based private schools – is important to many low-income families. So we want this option to remain viable. Unfortunately, if we don’t reverse recent trends, this private school choice is threatened.

Enrollment in Florida private schools has declined 20 percent in the past seven years, from 381,346 students in 2003-4 to 305,825 in 2010-11. And as the demand for private schools has declined, so has the supply. From 2004-5 to 2010-11, the number of private schools in Florida went from 2,304 to 2055, a decrease of 11 percent.

We know from Economics 101 that supply and demand are interdependent. A growth cycle occurs when increased demand leads to greater supply, which in turn drives more demand, which in turn generates more supply. And a death cycle happens when the opposite occurs:  less demand leads to less supply, which further reduces demand, which causes even less supply. Florida’s private schools today are in a pronounced downward spiral that cannot be explained fully by current economic conditions. If we cannot reverse this trend, private school choice for low-income families will be diminished. I don’t believe demand has decreased – I believe the demand is as great as ever – it’s just that parents can’t afford to make this choice.

One solution is to make private schools more affordable for working-class families.

Wealthy families, families with McKay Scholarships for disabled students, and low-income families with tax credit scholarships can afford private schools, but most middle-class families increasingly cannot. That is the primary reason why private school enrollment is decreasing in Florida and schools are closing. Florida may need to consider a publicly-funded scholarship or voucher program for working-class families to reverse this downward trend.

Enabling working-class families to better access private schools will assure that those parents also have a full array of educational choices for their students and, at the same time, help existing private schools to expand and new private schools to open. This increased supply will give all parents more choices, which will increase school quality as more schools compete for families.

The tax credit scholarship program that SUFS manages is growing 15 percent annually and still has a waiting list. It can’t be expanded to include working-class families without taking scholarships from low-income families — something we would strongly oppose. But we know our ability to achieve our mission is threatened unless Florida’s working-class families have more access to private schools, and that greater access may well require public funding.

The limited private options for working-class families may become the next political debate.

Doug Tuthill is president of Step Up for Students.

Coming up …

Tomorrow: Lynn Norman-Teck, communications director for the Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools, writes that parents will continue to be the driving force behind charter schools. And Cheri Shannon, president and CEO of the Florida Charter School Alliance, makes it clear that charter school supporters also want poor performing charters to be shut down.