The commissioner shared a letter he sent to Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen outlining “serious concerns” regarding alleged comments about school choice vouchers.
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — In a post on X on Friday, Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas shared a letter he sent to Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen outlining what he called “serious concerns”.
The letter claims the department received information from teachers that Asplen “specifically named legislators who should be sent complaints about the scholarship program” and encouraged subordinates “to vote the legislators in question out of office because the scholarship program, according to you, ‘takes the district’s money’”.
The education commissioner said in a statement to First Coast News that Asplen’s actions raise questions about his judgment and leadership of the St. Johns County School District.
“Encouraging school staff to campaign against duly elected legislators and to submit coordinated complaints about state scholarship programs crosses a clear line between professional responsibility and political advocacy.
“Blaming school choice initiatives for district challenges is not only misleading, but it ignores the reality that St. Johns County is not facing enrollment declines seen elsewhere in the state.
“Superintendent Asplen’s conduct is unacceptable and demands immediate correction.”
Asplen disputes those claims.
“I have never told any employees to vote anyone in or out of a position,” Asplen said. “When I do get a question from our stakeholders, for instance, employees, parents, the community, a lot of times they’ll ask me, ‘All right, so look, what should we do? Or what can we do? Or who do we talk to?’ And I always let them know that they can certainly call their local delegation.”
Asplen says the commissioner emailed him the letter, but he was in a meeting and first learned about it after the commissioner posted on social media.
“I was surprised that I just didn’t get a phone call to say, hey, you know, I need to talk to you about this. So surprising that it was a letter, especially to that degree, and then sent immediately out to social media instead of just, pick up the phone and let me know what was going on so we could talk through the issues.”
The superintendent responded with a three-page letter writing, “…it appears to be politicking rather than desiring to find mutual understanding through professional communication.”
This comes as the district faces significant budget challenges. Asplen says the St. Johns County School District is expecting a shortfall of about $20 million to $23 million dollars in the 2026-27 school year, which he attributes in large part to school vouchers.
“Last week I cut 22 positions out of the district office,” Asplen said. “Then we’ve cut just about every lease we have. And we’re looking also at our portables. We have 55 of those leases. And over the summer we’re cutting 98 more, and then we made some other adjustments all outside of the school.”
He says additional cuts will likely affect schools and increase class sizes.
“At the end of the day, I was able to save $13 million doing all that. I needed another $10 million, which will come from the schools,” Asplen said. “We just hope at some point that the vouchers will level out with the private schools and the home schools, so we’re not cutting every year.”
In his response letter to the commissioner, Asplen wrote, “In the interest of transparency, it is my understanding from the DOE and Step Up that approximately $250 million taxpayer dollars associated with vouchers are unaccounted for. I would like to faithfully assume that you are equally alarmed about this. I have been informed that you and the Department of Education have been working with Step Up to correct the errors relative to this.”
First Coast News reached out to the Florida Department of Education late Monday afternoon to inquire if millions of dollars truly are unaccounted for, but we have not yet gotten a response.
Asplen says his goal is to let everyone know what’s happening and be transparent about the vouchers.
“Then that allows us to put everything on the table and be collaborative about how we solve our issues so we can move forward in a positive way,” Asplen said. “That’s the only thing I’m doing.”