(UPDATE: See Below). Tuesday at noon Rick Scott will officially become the next governor of the great state of Florida. Unlike any other elected official we can think of in recent times, the chief official comes into office with his ratings down from his performance at the polls last November. Public Policy Institute revealed in late December that Scott's ratings were in the low 30s.
And some schoolteachers in the state, concerned about comments Scott has made about public education in Florida, say they intend to wear red on Tuesday as a symbolic protest against those plans. They're not digging Scott's proposals to revisit provisions on teacher merit pay that were included in last year's controversial SB 6, or his interest in expanding school voucher programs to all, and changing how public schools are funded.
Regarding vouchers, Team Scott is proposing a voucher-like program called "educational savings accounts," which would offer every public school student in the state a private school tuition subsidy. Currently, Florida's voucher program has been used only for low-income and disabled kids.
Hillsborough County's head school union chief, Jean Clements, condemned such an idea, telling the Tampa Tribune:
"Even the conservative leaders in the House and Senate, who have been big proponents of vouchers for a long time, have the ability, the experience and the insight to see what a flawed concept that would be," she said. "It leaves public schools still having to provide all of the services required by law … but they would be operating on a ghost budget from year to year. How would they provide those services? It would create great instability from year to year."
This article appears in Dec 30, 2010 – Jan 5, 2011.