With vouchers on the way, school increases tuition
Preparing for classes to resume next fall, St. Paul Catholic School in St. Petersburg told its families not to expect much difference in its tuition charges.
That changed after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure making state-funded private school vouchers of about $8,000 available to all school-age children, regardless of income.
That’s the approximate amount Florida will pay next year to educate most students in public schools.
After consulting the Diocese of St. Petersburg, parents and other area Catholic schools, “we decided that we need to take maximum advantage of this dramatically expanded funding source,” Monsignor Robert Gibbons, the St. Paul pastor, said in a YouTube video.
“Otherwise,” he added, “we would be negligent.”
So instead of paying $6,000 per child, families at the school who are St. Paul parish members will now be charged $10,000 per child.
Nonmembers will be charged $12,000 per child, instead of $7,000. Discounts for multiple-student families will be eliminated.
With $8,000 from the state covering most of that cost, families will owe far less than what they had been paying and the school will receive more.
“If we don’t take full advantage of this funding source, we will be leaving money on the table and it will revert back to the state,” Gibbons said in the video, listing teacher pay raises and capital improvement projects among the areas the school would bolster with the added revenue.
To get there, he said, “every family in the school will need to apply for the voucher.”
In 2022-23, the school of about 300 students had 62 voucher recipients, according to Step Up For Students, an organization that helps administer Florida’s voucher programs. Based on those numbers, and factoring in the $4,000 tuition increase, St. Paul could bring in nearly $1 million more in the school year starting this fall.
Voucher critics said the decision was predictable and expected more private schools to follow suit.
Tuition “is going to keep increasing, because they’re going to keep raising the voucher amount,” said Holly Bullard, chief strategy officer with Florida Policy Institute.
During a February meeting of the House Pre-K-12 Appropriations subcommittee, state Rep. Dan Daley, a
Broward Democrat, called on his colleagues to include a tuition increase cap in the measure as a way to prevent schools from pocketing additional taxpayer money they otherwise might not have sought.
Republican bill sponsors signaled a willingness to discuss the concept but never followed through. Daley said via text message that he was disappointed to hear that any schools are changing their tuition plans because they stand to get added state money.
“If they simply raise their tuition by $8,000, it’s not actually helping someone afford the school of their choice, which is part of supporters’ argument,” Daley said.
Senate Education Appropriations chairman Keith Perry, R-Gainesville, said his intention in supporting the bill and crafting the underlying budget for it was to provide more educational choices for families.
He shared some concern that a school would increase its costs to above the amount the voucher would cover, noting some families might not be able to afford the difference.
“We want parents to be able to look at the quality of education,” Perry said. “I would look at it as, the quality of education would come first, and the price would come second, but certainly a close second.”