When Camron Merritt came home from first grade with a card inviting him to a birthday party, he didn’t know what it was.
Recently adopted after two turbulent years in foster care, the 6-year-old had never been invited to a birthday party before.
He was the difficult kid with storm clouds behind his dark brown eyes. The one that other children and their parents couldn’t understand.
Camron and Rylan Merritt are typical brothers. "They fight like cats and dogs, and 10 minutes later they're best friends again," said adoptive mom Melissa Merritt.
All of that started to change when Camron’s adoptive parents took him out of his neighborhood school in Bushnell and enrolled him in a private school with a school choice scholarship.
New mom Melissa Merritt cried when she saw the invitation.
“Seeing your kid go from being the outcast, the kid that nobody talks to, to getting invited to a birthday party is such a big deal,” she said.
When they got Camron at age 5, Melissa and husband Brandon put him in the neighborhood school that was closest to her job as a victim’s advocate for the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. It did not go well.
Camron’s early childhood was plagued by neglect and exposure to domestic violence and drugs. The emotional damage was made worse by more than 20 foster homes and several schools before he was adopted. He was too much for most people to handle.
“He didn’t trust anybody. He didn’t like loud noises. If there was somebody yelling on TV, he used to run and hide in the bathtub,” Melissa said. “If you said no to him, his little face would scrunch up. He’d cross his arms and stomp his foot.”
At school, Camron wrestled with learning disabilities, severe ADHD and difficulty adjusting.
“Every day I was getting calls to come get him,” Melissa said. “He was hiding under his desk, screaming and throwing things, not paying attention, smacking other kids.”
Because Brandon does pest control work throughout the region, it was Melissa who had to leave her work frequently.
“It was extremely stressful,” she said.
Frustrated with a lack of support and communication from the school, Melissa resolved to find a better option and learned about Florida tax credit scholarships* from another adoptive mother. Children in foster care or out-of-home care automatically qualify for the scholarships and can keep them if they are adopted.
Since 2014, state law has allowed foster parents to apply for scholarships year-round. (more…)
Elementary sudents at Abundant Life Christian Academy head to lunch. Photo courtesy of the school.
Last year, as Eve and Allen Walker prepared their children to start kindergarten at Abundant Life Christian Academy, they had a conviction. If they were going to exercise school choice for their own daughter, they would try to do the same for Elias*, one of their foster children, who is about the same age.
"Anything that we would do with our own child is important to him, for his growth and development," Allen Walker said in an interview.
With Elias, there was a twist — the kind of unexpected turn of events that can often affect foster children.
The Walkers had applied in the spring for a tax credit scholarship that would help them send their daughter to Abundant Life. They had not done the same for Elias, because they expected him to rejoin his birth mother by the time school began. Then, last summer, with the start of kindergarten approaching, they learned that would not happen after all.
Since Elias would remain in their care, they applied for a scholarship that would allow him to enroll at Abundant Life with their daughter. Days before school started, they were able to get one.
Cases like theirs have prompted changes to the laws governing Florida's tax credit scholarship program. Foster children are eligible for the scholarships, much like they are often categorically eligble for school lunch programs and other assistance. (Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog and employs the author of this post, helps administer the scholarships for nearly 70,000 low-income students in Florida).
A new state law, approved last year, allows foster children to apply for scholarships year-round. The change was intended to help ensure they could apply for scholarships even if their circumstances changed suddenly – if, for example, they received a new placement that caused them to miss the normal application window. The revised law also extends scholarship eligibility to children placed in out-of-home care. (more…)
When Julie Blue agreed to be a foster parent to brothers Logan and Mason, she knew she wanted to send them to a high-performing school.
Blue attended a private elementary school as a child and later worked as a private school P.E. coach after a decade employed by Broward County public schools.
A private education with individual instruction and a safe environment seemed the best fit for the boys, who had been abused and neglected by their biological family before social workers took custody.
Today, the children are legally Blue’s sons and enrolled in Calvary Christian Academy, a private pre-K-12 school in Fort Lauderdale. Logan is a third-grader catching up quickly with his peers and Mason is thriving in a pre-K class.
“To be able to give them this same opportunity is a gift,’’ said Blue, a single parent who relies on tuition assistance from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, a parental school choice program administered by Step Up For Students (which co-hosts this blog). “I would not be able to send them to this school without it.’’
Logan, who just turned 10, received a full scholarship this year. The award covers roughly half of the academy’s $8,500 annual tuition plus fees. Blue pays about $6,500 for Mason, 4, who will become a Step Up scholar next school year when he is a kindergartner.
The private school price tag is an adjustment, said Blue, a swim school operator. She works harder growing her business, rarely eats out, rents movies instead of going to the theater and shops with coupons.
“It’s a sacrifice,’’ she said, “but it doesn’t feel like one when you see the fruits of your labor.’’
