I Francello McCoy was a parent that was fighting for school choice here in Missouri, because the school district in my area lost their accreditation.

The local newspaper read my story and interviewed my two daughters. Once the article was released the next day we received a call from a private school expressing their interest of allowing my daughters to enroll in their school.

During my daughter first year she did well academically and played basketball. Please review, pull up the footage on youtube.com type in: “The great Netta.”

The school wrote me a letter about 3 weeks ago and said that they are withdrawing my daughter Fernetta out of the school because of academic and conduct.

In March of 2008, Fernetta had a head concussion that caused her to sit out a whole year from playing basketball. Her dreams went down the drain because of a foul accident of playing at a basketball tournament in Branson Missouri with her league outside the district of four years of dedication.

My daughter Fernetta became depress and had to orally take medication to sleep. She’s had to take physical therapy, an MRI cat scan, and weekly doctors visits due to her injuries.

Since then we have had to seek assistance from doctors and counselor, which all have helped Fernetta regain her coordination back, which appears to me to be too late according to Lutheran Administrators.

It is of my opinion that we need the school support in helping us to revitalize our daughter Fernetta’s hope to be restored in completing her education in an effort to fulfill her career goals.

We believe everyone deserves a second chance, hopefully Fernetta can.

I requested a meeting after receiving the bad news to met with the Principal of the school. In my opinion the meeting did not go to well, because the principal already made up in his mind that he was not going to accept her back in school .

My daughter wrote a letter and read it, which touch the principal heart. The principal said he will give the information to the Board and review it and give me call.

I waited three weeks for a decision only to have them reconsider to let her come back for the second semester, contingent on her obtaining a 3.0 GPA.

In the mean time we have enrolled her in a Tech school that is the only available school in my district or the non-accredited school.

I would like to rely on your wisdom and or advice as of what is my next step to advocate for my daughter education? I am writing a letter to request a meeting with the Board to obtain a copy of their minutes from the meeting of there final decision pertaining to my daughter.

Please contact me via phone at or feel free to send me an email frncllmccoy@yahoo.com.

In closing, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to listen from a parent who is crying out for someone to listen.

Respectfully yours,
Mrs. McCoy

I’m so glad my children won’t take logic from you.

“I am so glad my children didn’t take math from Lisa. She mentioned “state” expenditures. For some reason she left out federal and local school district money. ”
I did discuss Federal money. However, that is based upon need and wiil not, can not be attached to vouchers. Nor is it likely that local districts will attach their local funds to vouchers though at least one state requires local districts to so for charters.

“Most school districts are far more top heavy and have huge layers of payroll abocve the classroom level.”
Really? How many have you worked at? Yes, in addition to teachers we have counselors, speech therapists, occupational and physical therapists, psychologists, teacher aides, secretaries, cafeteria workers,janitors, principals, people to take care of payroll, finance, and human resources, groundskeepers, maintenance, and licensed administrators to keep up with state requirements. Whom do you suggest we do without? Who will do it at private schools if they suddenly have to meet state rules?

“No Lisa, they will not take tuition and keep the voucher over and above tuition. I attended private H.school and of course it also had donations from churches that government schools do not have.”
And you know this how? Obviously, you don’t. There are private schools in my area who charge as much as a university, why wouldn’t they raise their rates?

“Now the ultimate killer Lisa is graduation rates. Government schools do a horrible job of graduation rates. Too bad it is partially the teachers fault. If we paid teachers a commision based on graduation rates, it would clean up the mess a little.”
I see. My school district will do fine, our graduation rate is in the 90s.
Of course the parents have no responsibility this at all. Sheesh. I have kids who are read to, have an organized family life, are expected to do their homework and get good grades and guess what, they do. On the other hand I have kids who don’t own a book, whose parents are gone much of the time or missing, who cuss at their child’s teacher and ignore discipline problems. Not a surprise when they fall further and further behind or drop out,

“Lisa your math is defective. Yes We pay more that what it costs in taxes during our childs education. Every grocery bag has property tax in the price. Every automobile we register has taxes in it. from property taxes in most areas to sales taxes. The car dealer pays property taxes for schools. I am still paying property taxes after my children are in college.
Your union arithmetic is what our CPA firm calls fraudulent in claim.”
I see, so you seriously believe that the only service you receive from the state is public education. No police or fire service, no prisons, no parks, no roads, no libraries, no medical services, no public colleges, no state guard, etc.

“As un educated as union teachers are, Lisa, My daughter recieved 30,000 dollars plus about that same amount in expense account to get a top education in a top engineering school. Her sports accomplishments where at the all american level her final year. The “system” had over 75,000 dollars in her, She is actually paying for all her own scholarships by reason of taxes.”
How? Your twenty something daughter has paid $75,000 in taxes plus 18 years of schooling already?

“Her employment offers are very high and she will be starting out in her new house, paying lots of property taxes and state income taxes on top of federal. She has recieved 8,000 dollars from Barry Hussein for first time buyer and 3,500 from the same for a new heat pump system. Her degree is in December. She will make 2-3 times as much as a school teacher every year. She will pay in taxes a school worker salary every year.”
Wow. Given that the average engineer makes $60,000 starting out so she might pay, $20,000 in taxes in one year (and that really is pushing it). So you think a school worker should earn $10,000 a year???? Huh.

Oh and you should thank a teacher for your daughter getting so far… actually, you probably need to thank close to a hundred teachers.

I don’t believe that if we offered vouchers tuition would stay at its current price. Private schools have every incentive to remain exclusive and since parents have already demonstrated that they can and will pay $12,000+ (there are some schools here that cost $17,000) out of pocket, they have every reason to raise tuition by as much as the voucher is worth. So if schools would receive that $9,600 in a voucher, they will raise their tuition from $12,000 up to $21,600.

I lived and taught in the Triangle for several years and I hate to tell you this but you did choose were your tax dollars go. Much of school funding is based upon property taxes, in selecting a home, you selected which school to direct those taxes to. By enrolling your child, you stipulated that the school receive a per pupil allotment on your behalf. Of course, I don’t think most families pay $27,000 dollars in state taxes each year so the argument that you want to direct YOUR tax dollars to the school of your choice seems silly to me.

In my local area of Raleigh Durham, my local school district gets about $9,000 for each one of my 3 kids. There are private schools in the area that are more expensive, and (guess what) there are quite a few that are less than $9000 per year.

Only if I had a CHOICE as a parent on where the school tax money was spent!

Florida’s CTC program would be a much better model…if it worked to significantly raise student achievement. One of the problems, I think, is that the bar for “effective” has been raised among the achievement gap-focused reform community. Tiny, slow gains like the ones in DC aren’t enough for us. We’ve been dazzled by KIPP and GreenDot like numbers, and knowing what is possible makes it hard to accept less.

Vouchers will not, can not be more than the per pupil allotment. For my district it was 9,600 last year. Tuition at my son’s private school is several thousand more than that. Other private schools in the area are more. Maybe the Catholic schools are less, I wouldn’t know.

I don’t see how you can separate state funds from public education law for one group of schools. Even the charter schools can’t do that. They are still obligated to follow every rule I described above.

Also, even if the states puts vouchers out there, Federal money for Title 1 will not go with it. That deals with the low income students. It provides free and reduced lunch, remedial reading programs and other resources for disadvantaged kids. This money won’t follow the voucher so the private schools will be working with less resources than the public schools.

Honestly, I don’t know why a successful private school would sign up for that. They have EVERY incentive to simply raise tuition by the voucher amount; their kids can still pay the difference and will get the voucher but they can still keep out the disadvantaged and the difficult. This way they can buy more fancy stuff for their students and become more prestigious. Private schools expect that their student’s families to make donations and to volunteer. Why would they weaken that culture?

This elasticity of demand was seen in college tuition and the increase in financial aid in the 90’s. Students had more financial aid available so they were less sensitive to increases in tuition. Now it is common to see yearly tuition increases of 5% at the University in my home town because the financial aid keeps getting raised to meet the cost, not because the cost of education has actually gone up.