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Vouchers for Jesus

This is just too good to pass up: a parent whose kids are ineligible to receive vouchers gets them anyway and uses them to help her kids learn songs praising Jesus. Then the kids are held up as model successes of the very program which they have cheated in order to enroll in.

For school voucher proponents, the morning was almost perfect.

The children on stage sang songs about Jesus while about 2,000 of their classmates in matching red T-shirts clapped along. Attorney General Charlie Crist promised to expand vouchers and Gov. Jeb Bush , who is expected to unveil a new type of voucher today , vowed that corporate tax credit vouchers would continue as long as he is in office.

There was, for voucher fans last week, only one glitch: The parent chosen to offer a testimonial for corporate vouchers was by her own statements ineligible to receive them but, because of a lack of oversight, has had two children enrolled for three years.

The law passed in 2001 at the behest of a major Republican donor requires participating children to have been enrolled in a public school the year before they first receive vouchers. Linda Rutledge, a social worker, said she got vouchers for her son and daughter in 2002 , even though they were attending a Catholic school at the time and had not attended public school for several years.

"Somehow, you've got a poster child for this program, and she's flatly ineligible for the program? How does that happen?" asked Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville.

King was instrumental in the program's founding but is in his second year of pushing legislation to add "accountability" to the state's three voucher programs, which this year are sending about $120 million of public money to private schools.

John Kirtley, the Tampa businessman who effectively runs the corporate voucher program, did not return phone calls for comment.

Cindy Forster, head of the HEROES voucher group in Jacksonville, which receives money from Kirtley for corporate vouchers, said in an e-mail that of more than 10,000 children in the program, Rutledge's children were among 24 improperly enrolled by FloridaChild, a group that no longer distributes vouchers.

Only five such children, including Rutledge's two, are still receiving vouchers, Forster said.

Rutledge said her children had attended a Catholic school for several years on private scholarships. When her son was finishing eighth grade , the highest grade at the school , three years ago, both children applied to and were accepted by Duval County magnet schools.

Rutledge, however, learned of corporate vouchers and decided instead to send her children to Potter's House Christian Academy.

"I think it's an excellent program because it gives us choice," she said, praising her son's "spiritual growth" at the school.

But remember: according to Jeb!, state voucher money does not aid religion in any way.