Naples Standard

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden's vow to end school vouchers gives Naples businessman Carl Monticelli another reason not to support him.

Biden's plan would force more than 130,000 Florida students attending private schools to attend public K-12 schools because they'd lose their scholarships, the Sunshine Sentinel reported.

With his travel company business somewhat sidelined by the pandemic, he's helping at Home Instead to provide care for the elderly.

"I think families should have the option to be able to choose where they think their kids should learn," Monticelli told the Naples Standard.

His three children are grown. Looking back, not sending them to Catholic school might have been a mistake.

"I think if we would have insisted on a Catholic education, it would have been a different story and they would have had a much stronger appreciation, their faith, the importance of God in Christ, in everyone's life," Monticelli said.

Monticelli looks at school choice as a freedom, with people being entitled to certain services including education.

"And why shouldn't we have the ability to choose the type of education we want our children to have and have our tax dollars be applied towards that education?" he said.

There are studies that suggest that on a general basis Catholic schools do a better job of teaching youth than traditional public schools even excluding lessons on faith.

"Why shouldn't parents have the choice to be able to put their kids in schools that they think are going to better enable their kids to have successful futures and then move on in life?" Monticelli asked.

He related the current controversy over choosing a replacement for former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to school choice by saying children educated in a Catholic school would understand issues like Roe vs. Wade's constitutionality.

"And if you relate it to people of faith, having the choice of school choice on where our children will be given information that hopefully would help them to air on the side of pro-life versus pro-choice," Monticelli said.