>>Welcome to Facing South Florida.
I'm Jim DeFede and Governor Ron DeSantis this week
signed a bill allowing any parent,
regardless of how much money they make,
to receive a voucher of around $9,000 a year
to help pay for private, or even to homeschool their child.
Later in the show, you will hear from the president
of the Teacher's Union, who believes the measure
will cripple public schools,
creating a two-tier system of education in the state.
But we begin with one of the sponsors of the bill,
Republican State Representative, John Snyder,
from Martin County.
>>Well, for decades, Florida has been a leader
in the nation when it comes to empowering parents
with making the best decisions
for their children's education.
And over the last 25 years, we've seen the improvements
that the competition has brought
with our charter school program,
with our current scholarship programs.
And we really got to a point that said,
we've gotta stop drawing an arbitrary income line
in the sand that only allows rich people
to access school choice.
And we are making sure that every parent now has the tools
and the resources to send their child to any school
that they feel will best answer their child's needs.
>>What's the cost of this going to be?
>>Yeah, so our house budget estimators
put a price tag just over $200 million.
You know, we've seen a couple different groups
produce different numbers, but at the end of the day,
we feel like our number hits the mark.
But we have taken into account that if we do go over
and above on this, we've got the cash
here in the state to do that.
And in my opinion, investing in our children is one
of the most noble investments we, as a state, can make.
>>Well, it seems like what this actually is going to be
is a windfall for the very wealthy parents
that you say this is designed to sort of,
not necessarily help, but to help others.
That at the end of the day what you're gonna have
is a whole lot of parents who send their kids already
to private schools or pay for charter schools
and are now going to get a huge bonus check,
essentially, from the state,
somewhere in the range of $9,000.
>>The folks that we're worried about in this bill
are the individuals that, prior to this bill taking effect,
that was not even an option in their toolbox.
And we know that
through the Florida Empowerment scholarships
and what we've seen with our first responders
and opening up the access last year
to our law enforcement professionals,
the results speak for themselves,
that there are hundreds of thousands of families
that are right on this threshold
where they make too much money to qualify
for certain programs, but they don't have the resources
to be able to send their child to a private school,
or a homeschool, or any of the other options
in this toolbox.
And I think one of the other important steps
that we took was creating that flexibility
for part-time enrollment.
Because at the end of the day, we know that there
are different programs, different resources
that kids, especially with disabilities, need access to.
And so to empower the parents through this savings account
to be able to build the program
that will best meet the needs of their children,
that's what this thing is all about.
>>How do you guarantee that the dollars being spent
are being properly spent, they're being wisely spent?
Once you start taking money out of
what would've been following students into public schools
where there is accountability, there are school boards,
there is testing, and you start allowing people
to take eight, nine, $10,000 from the state
to homeschool a child or to send them to a private school.
And you and I both know, a lot of private schools
are gonna suddenly pop up
because this is gonna create a windfall for them.
How do you maintain accountability for those schools?
>>Right now we have the scholarship programs
that have been administering this here in the state
for decades, well over hundreds of thousands of families.
And they have a proven track record,
how to make sure that if a private school
is going to participate in this,
that there's good transparency, accountability,
and certain standards are being upheld.
But at the end of the day, the reason we pass this
is because we believe that it's not the government's role,
necessarily, to determine the outcome for the children,
we trust our parents.
And our parents are going to be
the ultimate decision makers in this.
And through the competition that will undoubtedly come
to the public school sector,
that is what ultimately raises the standards.
And so whether the children that stay
in the traditional public school
for that entire K through 12 setting,
they still will be benefiting from this
because we want our schools to compete for the business
of parents sending their kids
to that brick and mortar facility.
>>The, the interesting thing is, are you concerned at all
about the children who end up in public schools
are the children who often, these private schools
and many charter schools will not want,
because for instance, they might have special needs,
they might have educational learning plans
that are more difficult.
Public schools have to provide that,
private schools, charter schools do not.
They can opt out, as you said, and not take the dollars.
So will we just end up with a system
where the public schools are left with the burden
of having to educate those who are most vulnerable,
and as a result of lower attendance,
they're gonna have less resources to do it?
>>Well, you know, as a father of two young kids,
we know that no child is identical to the next,
even within twins,
Every child is unique and has different needs
and different abilities.
And so, part of what this bill does
is make sure that parents are informed.
If the school does not offer all of the services
that a traditional public school would provide,
that the parent knows that.
But what we've seen throughout the state,
some of the most successful charter schools
have been schools created for those
with some of the highest disabilities.
Right in my own district, the Hope Center for Autism,
which focuses on providing a a six through 20 curriculum
for children that are on the autism spectrum,
I believe that those kids wouldn't receive
nearly the level of detailed attention
that they do in that school as opposed
to just being bundled in with everyone else
in the traditional public school system.
And so that's where we're going with this bill,
is allowing the marketplace to compete and create programs
that are gonna meet the needs
of some of our most special kids in the state.
>>I wanted to ask you about a couple other issues,
some other legislation that you're working on.
One deals with the issue of tracking large sales
of ammunition and guns that,
whether or not through credit card purchases or banks,
could flag if they see some abnormal activity
in terms of massive volume of an individual buying guns
and buying ammo, and being able to share that information
with law enforcement.
You've introduced a bill that would prohibit those banks
from alerting anyone, or even keeping track of those records
in case law enforcement wanted to.
Why do you think that's necessary?
>>Yeah. Well first of all,
nothing in what has been happening,
and really the problem that we're trying to address
is that the group that controls the merchant class codes,
which is what's assigned to every credit card purchased,
was wanting to create a registry of all gun purchases,
regardless of size or quantity.
And to do that, they were targeting gun stores,
which have no ability to actually track
the merchandise being purchased.
And so, a couple of issues that really concerned us here
at the state level, one, we refused to allow the creation
of a backdoor registry by the harvesting of personal data
and purchases made by consumers.
And second, we have a grave concern that individuals
who are not purchasing firearms at all
would inadvertently end up on one of these lists.
And then third, the cancellation of the consumer
is something we're gonna stand up and adamantly defend,
because we know that there has been this effort
to try and create a monitoring program which ultimately
would target constitutionally-abled citizens
to practice their second amendment.
And here in Florida, we're certainly gonna stand up to that.
>>But when you say to target and to look at,
we're probably talking about law enforcement.
Your father is the sheriff of Martin County.
Wouldn't your father want to be able to know, for instance,
and be able to, if they're investigating someone,
to be able to track whether or not
they've made large-scale purchases of ammunition
and of assault weapons?
Wouldn't that be something that would be important
for law enforcement?
>>In today's law, as it stands today,
law enforcement does have the ability,
in the course of investigation, to subpoena those records.
So nothing that we did in this proposal
would change that-
>>But you're making it harder,
if you try to subpoena those records,
and then the credit card companies and the banks
no longer keep those records
because you're telling them they're not allowed
to keep them, then what good is a subpoena?
>>No, they can absolutely track the purchases
of credit card usage.
Right now it's flagged as general retail.
But at the end of the day, if they want to go in
and examine those receipts, they still can do this.
And that's one of the misnomers about this entire effort.
Folks thought that the code
would actually pick up on the firearm.
And that's not what the code does.
The code only picks up that a purchase was made
at a gun store.
And so in theory, you could walk in,
buy a pair of sunglasses, buy a gun safe,
buy cleaning equipment, buy a couple t-shirts,
have $3,000 on your credit card,
and all of a sudden you're flagged as a gun purchaser
and you never did that.
And so we have very strict laws,
both federally and at the state level,
that mandate the background check requirement.
And so, it's one of those red herrings
that has been used by folks on the other side to say,
"Oh, this is gonna make us safer."
But at the end of the day,
all it does is open up big government
and our big corporations from tracking our consumers.
>>But you also voted for the permitless carry,
saying that you don't want individuals who want
to carry a concealed weapon in the state
to have to apply for a permit or go through
any sort of training or any of the type of regulation
that you might wanna have to guarantee public safety,
or to help at least achieve a public safety.
>>Yeah look, when the framers of the the Second Amendment
penned that document, there was a reason
they did not include a permission slip from the government.
And at the end of the day, any gun purchase
that happens here in the state,
there is still a significant background screening
that is conducted.
There's a three day cooling period.
And so nothing in our bill changed access to firearms
or how firearms are purchased.
It really just says, if you want to protect your family,
your home, your business, your property,
you have the right to carry that in a concealed manner,
again, without a permission slip from the government.
>>Anywhere they want, pretty much, right?
>>No, we didn't change any of the rules
pertaining to private property.
If someone still wants to maintain a gun-free zone
on their private property, they can do that.
Churches, schools, that is all still in place.
It's just simply the ability on where you could legally,
or how you carry a firearm.
>>When we come back, we'll hear from the head
of the teacher's union, Karla Hernandez-Mats.