Video Transcript

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Question: So I've heard that private school vouchers make it more affordable and give more options to less fortunate families on where they send their students.

 

Wooten: That is what the Republicans who wanted to push private school vouchers wanted us to think. That is how they tried to sell it to the masses.

 

So I'm Dr. Denise Wooten, and one of the things I monitor carefully, as a result of my work with kids with autism and ADHD, is their education. How can they be educated? So when they say, "Oh, this is going to help those kids, because they made kids with disabilities tier one in terms of who gets preference." So if they get a $10,000 voucher, most of the private schools are $30 to $40,000 a year. And most of the families of children with disabilities, they're already going to spend an extra million to raise these kids. That's on average what they cost, in terms of time and everything that they need. And so where are they going to come up with the other 30 or 20,000 is a problem.

 

Now, then they're going to come back and say, "Yes, but we have said that if you have an FIE, which is a full and individual evaluation from a school district, you are eligible for up to $30,000." Guess who pays for the FIEs? The public school pays for them. We taxpayers pay for them. So basically they're going to ding the school two ways. They're going to say, "Go get your FIE from the school, where you don't have to pay a dime, and then we'll give you $30,000 toward a private school." But they're trying to do that in order to get rich people to continue to be able to afford private schools.

 

The vast majority of my clients can't even make a $10,000 a month, I mean a year, payment. And so how are they going to come up with another 20 or 30 thousand in order to get a solid special education?

 

Now, if we funded the schools enough, we'd have better special education in the schools, and some of these kiddos would not be having their parents seek out private school options for their special education needs. So it's all of a piece, in order to make it so that our tax dollars are going to the wealthy and not to the people that need it most.