St. Johns County’s school superintendent went on a rant about money — and got a well-deserved putdown by the state education commissioner.

Brennan Aspen apparently does not understand school funding. Frustrated because he didn’t have as much taxpayer money as he wanted, he blamed the state’s popular and successful voucher program.

He even resorted to the old, discredited claim that vouchers “drain” money from the government schools.

This caused Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas to post on X (Twitter):

“Serious concerns have emerged about Superintendent Asplen. According to accounts from teachers in the district, he urged staff to send complaints about the state’s scholarship program to legislators and even encouraged efforts to vote those officials out of office. In fact, SJCSD has better student enrollment growth, and therefore funding growth, than most of the state. Florida families deserve leaders who can make tough decisions without casting blame. Accountability matters!”

It certainly does. But liberal educators remain disturbed that the government school monopoly has been broken and parents no longer must allow their children to attend schools where the children are not learning or where there are unacceptable acts of crime and violence.

In addition to vouchers, parents also have home schooling and other choices.

Kamoutsas also wrote a letter to Aspen, calling his alleged comments “wholly inappropriate.”

Who benefits from the reforms in Florida? Parents, children, taxpayers – and the government schools, which have improved because of the competition.

Schools get money from the state based on the number of students in the district.

If students leave a school, the school no longer receives the funding – and no longer has the expense of teaching the child.

Liberals make the ridiculous argument that it costs more money to add students and also costs more money to subtract students. If they are teaching students to think like that, little wonder students are fleeing the government schools.

However, in the case of St. Johns, Aspen seems unduly alarmed. His own web side claims a loss of 1 Percent of students in the past year.

All government schools are seeing increased funding. Kamoutsas says the St. Johns County school district received roughly 16% more in state dollars this school year than it did in the 2019-20 school year.

The operating budget for St. Johns this year is $626,974,282. Five years ago, it was $425.8 million.

The liberal complaint is that people who have chosen other venues for their children’s education are getting state funds.

What they don’t mention is this:

• Those people pay school taxes, in addition to tuition.
• The cost of a voucher is less than the cost of a government school education, so the taxpayers save more with every voucher issued.