As Saturday’s Georgia-Florida game approaches, much attention is being paid to the fact that the Gators just fired their head coach and are now looking to lure a high-quality replacement to Florida.
Yet, curiously, there’s another Sunshine State recruiting effort that ought to interest Georgia residents — and Peach State policymakers — even more.
A billboard recently appeared in downtown Atlanta featuring a young schoolgirl with this message: “Every Florida child gets $8,000 for public, private, or home education. Join us.”
The billboard is sponsored by a Florida-based think tank for which I work. And when some of my Georgia friends first saw it, they asked if this was some dirty trick:
“Are you guys trying to lure some of our state’s education-minded families to Florida?”
I can understand why Georgia folks might worry about losing high-quality K-12 families to Florida. The Sunshine State has the most robust school choice programs in the country. More than 500,000 Florida students now receive school choice scholarships. And more than half of our state’s K-12 students (51%) now attend something other than their zoned public school.
Unsurprisingly, Florida is consistently ranked #1 in education freedom by various assessment groups. And since our school choice programs are now available to all families regardless of income, we’ve seen a steady stream of education-minded families moving to our state in recent years.
Many of these new Florida residents are “digital nomads” who, with the rise of remote work, can now live and work — and educate their kids! — anywhere they want. And it isn’t just Florida’s big cities that are seeing students flourish thanks to universal school choice. Many of our state’s rural areas and small towns are also benefiting from the rise of microschools, online, and hybrid programs serving scholarship families.
So, yes, Florida’s school choice programs are a magnet, bringing some of our nation’s best and brightest students to the state, now being called “America’s education destination.”
Still, there’s no reason Georgia couldn’t adopt similar school-choice policies for Peach State parents. And as someone who has deep ties to Georgia (I graduated from UGA, married a gal from Dalton, and formerly worked for Sen. Sam Nunn) – that’s precisely what I hope Peach State policymakers will do.
To be sure, Georgia policymakers will have to overcome all sorts of scare tactics and hypothetical horror stories advanced by school choice critics. They’ll need to recognize something every football fan knows: Even the very best programs sometimes aren’t the right “fit” for a particular student/athlete. (And, frankly, it’s unfair to public schools to expect them to be the best fit for every student in their zone.)
Now, if Peach State policymakers fail to act, Florida will happily accept any K-12 families who want to “enter the transfer portal” and move to our state. But our strong preference would be for Georgia — and every other state in SEC Country — to join us in adopting universal school choice scholarships for every K-12 student.
So, to all my Peach State pals wondering about our billboard, please hear me when I say:
“No, Georgia, it’s not a trick; Florida just wants to share a kid-friendly treat.”
William Mattox is the senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.
