Gov. signs voucher expansion

Legislation allows school program to grow drastically

A popular school voucher program is set to grow dramatically this year, allowing as many as 28,000 more Florida children to use tax dollars to pay tuition at private campuses, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation authorizing the expansion on Thursday at a Tampa school.

More than 46,600 students could receive vouchers through the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program this year, up from about 18,000 this year, at an additional cost of about $200 million. The Family Empowerment Scholarship is one of five state-backed programs that pay for students to attend roughly 2,000 private schools, most of them religious, statewide.

DeSantis signed the legislation at Cristo Rey Tampa Salesian High School, a Catholic college preparatory school and work study program designed primarily for underserved students. President Scott Morreale said 98% of the students in this year’s graduating class, the school’s first, plan to attend college.

Most of the roughly 174 students who attended Cristo Rey during the 2019-2020 school year used scholarships

to pay tuition, according to records from the Department of Education and Step up for Students, a non-profit organization that administers the largest scholarship programs.

Programs like school vouchers provide options beyond traditional neighborhood public schools to parents, Morreale said.

“The governor understands we are moving toward a new definition of public education in Florida,” he said.

Created in 2019, the Family Empowerment Scholarship was intended as a relief valve for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which is available to low-income families. Nearly 110,000 students received scholarships from that program last year. DeSantis said before the Family Empowerment Scholarship was created, 15,000 to 20,000 students were on a waiting list for Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

“We wanted those kids off the waitlist. We wanted to be able to empower parents — many of them are low-income parents, many of them are single, working mothers, to be able to have a meaningful choice and to be able to get their child in the best environment, so we did the Family Empowerment Scholarship, which effectively cleared the waitlist,” DeSantis said.

But unlike the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which is funded by companies that receive dollar-for-dollar tax write-offs on their tax bills in exchange for contributions to the scholarship fund, the Family Empowerment Scholarship is supported directly by the state.

“This scholarship is not dependent on tax-credited donations from companies. The funding from the scholarships comes from the state budget; therefore, the funding is not dependent on the profit of donors” Morreale said.

Though touted as a way to help youngsters from low-income families, some of the Family Empowerment scholarships could be open to students from families of four earning up to $81,000 a year. Lower-income families will continue to receive priority to receive the scholarships, as they did last year, however.

The expansion of the program was the second major piece of education legislation DeSantis has signed this week. On Wednesday, DeSantis signed a bill that promises to boost pay for many public school teachers and make the minimum salary among the highest in the nation, he said. The goal is to have teachers, on average, earn at least $47,500.

State scholarships or vouchers are popular with Florida parents. More than 167,000 Florida students used them to pay private school tuition last year at an annual cost of more than $1 billion. But students who use vouchers do not take the same standardized tests as their public school counterparts.