Editor’s note: Legislation to expand and strengthen the Florida tax credit scholarship program, and to create education savings accounts for special-needs students, cleared the Senate Friday on a 29-11 vote and is now headed to Gov. Rick Scott. Three Senate Democrats voted yes for parental choice, despite tremendous pressure this year to tow the party line: Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate; Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Miami; and Sen. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee. In his remarks on the Senate floor, Ring noted the pressure but said he was proud and thrilled to support the bill. Here are his remarks in full. (The scholarship program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)
So I’m going to take this a little bit out of Republican versus Democrat discussion, and talk a little bit about generational issues. Some of us in this room are at that age where we have young children. And we’re seeing an epidemic that I think hasn’t been addressed on the cure and why, that some of us older probably couldn’t imagine what our world can be like today. Some of you have grandkids and you can understand it from that standpoint. But as parents today, young children, their life is very different. Fifteen, 20 years ago, autism in this country was 1 in 15,000. For whatever reason, and this is not part of the debate, today it’s down to 1 in 50 on the spectrum. That doesn’t include kids with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy … ADHD, and any other development disorder that has become prevalent and epidemic in our society.
We’re at a point where things change. And the word voucher is such an ugly word but it doesn’t need to be. Because it’s not about that. It really isn’t. It’s about where we are in our world today, or what we as parents of young children have to face every single day. You know, to me, progressive means we change with the times. And changing with the times is being realistic of what we as parents have to face daily with our kids and these sorts of challenges.
I can’t, no matter what the political ramifications may be, the thought of going home and voting against a bill that puts these children on a path for equalization, for normalization, to get a degree – no matter what the political ramification is, to me this is where policy outstrips politics every single time. You know, my first year here I voted against a corporate income tax (scholarship program). And I got home, and I was invited by a number of the schools to come visit. Come see. Not spend a lot of time like you do in the public schools, but come visit our school.
And I went to visit a lot of schools. And I saw a lot of these kids. Many of them had, you know, profound developmental disabilities. Many of them came from, weren’t developmentally disabled, but they came from terribly impoverished backgrounds. And all of these kids were at one point in the public school system. And as far as I could see, every kid I saw was thriving.
I came back after that, and vowed I’d never vote against the corporate income tax (scholarship program) again. And I haven’t. And I’ve had a couple elections since then. It’s not been an issue. Hasn’t been an issue one bit for me.
But that’s not really why I’m voting for the bill. I mean I love the accountability aspect and I understand the back and forth on the idea of vouchers and are we taking public school money away and don’t we need to focus on improving our public schools. I get all that. But what I also understand, and it hits home for every parent with young children, I assure you, and for many of you that have grandchildren, is just where the world is today and what is happening. And to have to live it, day to day to day to day.
You know what? We as parents, we have to make choices. We have to make choices that may not be popular with society. But we’re making those choices for our children.
So I for one am going to ignore the politics of this. And I am going to vote for where we are today as a society. And I want these children to be able to be normalized, to be equalized. What I want them to have is a path that they will be in a workforce, for whatever their, you know, ceiling may be. And I don’t know what that ceiling is for each one of them. But I guarantee you it’s a lot higher than I think what we give these kids credit for every single day.
And if this bill gets us there, then I’m proud, I’m thrilled to be able to say that I can go home and not just vote for this bill. But I cannot wait to be able to go home and defend this bill.
