One of the more delicious aspects of the recent election is that the biggest supporter of Democrats the powerful teachers' union bosses may have cost Democrats the election.
The liberal party counted on an outpouring of black voters, delivering 90 percent of their votes to Democrats.
Instead, political science professor Susan MacManus told the Orlando Sentinel, while blacks made up 14 percent of all voters in 2014, compared to 13 percent in 2012 and 11 percent in 2010, Rick Scott doubled the percent he won in 2010 and did far better than the 4 percent of the black vote won by Mitt Romney in 2012. Scott won by about 64,000 votes.
Why would black voters shift gears?
One likely explanation is the cruel lawsuit filed by the teacher unions, aimed at forcing children into failing government schools.
About 70,000 low-income children have been getting an education in schools chosen by their parents, thanks to the tax credit scholarship program.
The program allows poor children the same opportunity for an education that more affluent families have by giving businesses that provide scholarships a credit on state taxes.
The lawsuit notes that the Supreme Court struck down an earlier program through which the state provided scholarships to poor families because it diverted money from the government schools and says it should apply in this case.
But that decision was based on faulty reasoning, and the facts are different.
The left cannot get its collective mind around the fact that government schools are funded on a per-pupil basis. In effect, they are paid a certain amount to educate each child.
This is fair because it costs money to educate each child. But you can't logically say it costs more to educate additional children and then turn around and say it costs more money (or the same amount) to educate fewer children.
Money follows the child. If 600 kids leave or never attend a school system, that is 600 kids they don't have to educate. Since most systems are growing, that is also one expensive school they don't have to build.
Per-pupil funding for government schools, by the way, has increased by 40 percent in the past 13 yearsand no district is spending less now than it was then.
Because the scholarships are far less than the amount paid to government schools for each child, it is also a substantial savings to taxpayers (about $58 million).
Two-thirds of the children getting scholarships are from minority families and the parents know these facts. They can't be happy with the liberals who are trying to force their children to leave the schools they have chosen for them and return to schools where the children were not learning and may have been at risk physically as well.
It seems highly unlikely the Supreme Court could conclude that money never paid to the state was diverted from government schools.
Regardless what the court rules, the greed of the Education Blob probably sank whatever faint chance the left had of ousting Scott and establishing an obstacle to the common-sense actions of the Florida Legislature.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
