A Florida lawmaker who has openly supported school vouchers surrendered to authorities last week after being indicted for crimes related to a Christian school she administers.
One of the chief arguments opponents of school vouchers (sometimes called “school choice”) make is that the entire thing is just a scheme to shovel taxpayer money into religious institutions. That is allegedly the case when it comes to Florida Rep. Carol Amesty (R-Orange).
Amesty serves on the Florida House Choice and Innovation subcommittee. In 2023, she voted in that committee to expand Florida’s school voucher program. The move immediately raised questions of impropriety. The Orlando Sentinel reported that Amesty was the administrator of the Central Christian Academy. The school has received $262,000 of state money this school year from the voucher system and stood to receive more if the state expanded the program.
School voucher programs, such as the one Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sworn to pass in 2025, send the vast majority of their money to wealthy Christian schools, usually in urban and suburban areas. The Washington Post found that 82 percent of Florida voucher students go to schools like Central Christian Academy.
Now, Amesty is facing multiple felony accounts related to her school. The charges are that she forged a man’s signature while working as an official notary, a charge that carries up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines. The charging documents say that Amesty did this before she was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2022.
Amesty, for her part, denies the charges, and claims the whole thing was a political railroading.
“This prosecution, initiated just a few weeks prior to absentee ballots being dropped, is based on misleading reports from a partisan newspaper about a notarization of an employee verification background report,” her campaign tweeted. “Rep. Amesty calls for a speedy trial, looks forward to her day in court, and is confident of her public vindication.”
Amesty’s indictment is yet another piece of evidence that the voucher system Abbott is determined to pass in Texas has too much potential for corruption. In Arizona, widely touted by conservatives as a voucher success story, a great deal of money going to private schools has wound up in the hands of the Donald Trump campaign for speaker engagements. This also involved a prominent Christian school in the state.
A major problem with voucher systems is a significant lack of state oversight when it comes to how the private schools are administered. They are rarely graded on their performances, have far fewer agencies they must answer to, and often do not have to follow discrimination guidelines.
Millions of dollars flowing to opaque institutions with deep ties to the Republican political machine create environments where corruption and crime can breed. It’s happening in Florida, and there is no reason to think it won’t happen in Texas as well.
