Gov. DeSantis signs off on voucher expansion

‘We worked really hard to be able to deliver this year for students and families’

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 nonprofit organization that administers the largest scholarship