(The Center Square) – Florida’s $4 billion school voucher system, scrutinized for accountability shortfalls that led to a deficit last year, would receive more oversight under legislation that unanimously passed the state Senate on Wednesday.
Senate Bill 318 is a bipartisan response to an audit that found the 2024-2025 school year had expanded the program’s eligibility, resulting in far more students receiving scholarship payments than anticipated. The legislation now moves to the House for consideration.
Florida established universal school choice in 2023, creating a system that sends billions of public education dollars to students enrolled in private schooling and homeschooling. The money goes into education savings accounts that can be used for private-school tuition, educational materials for homeschooling and tutoring expenses.
The school voucher program ballooned from $2 billion to $4 billion in three years as its student population rose from 200,000 to approximately 500,000, according to Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, a sponsor of the oversight bill.
He said it no longer makes sense to combine funding for public and private schooling, and the bill aims to track the money by separating the two. It also creates a path to provide supplemental state funds to schools facing enrollment changes and requires monthly verification of eligibility before payments to students.
Gaetz called the state audit of the voucher system “tough medicine” and said ignoring the warnings would be “legislative malpractice.”
“Students move back and forth between and among private and homeschooling and public schools from year to year. Sometimes from month to month or week to week,” Gaetz said. “The money is supposed to follow the student but the students are on the move before, during and after the school year by the tens of thousands. On any given day of the week, the Department of Education can’t find 30,000 students we’re paying for. That’s $270 million we’re paying for students we can’t locate.”
Sen. Tracie Davis, a Democrat who voted for the bill, said she appreciated the effort to address issues that were previously raised when lawmakers debated the voucher system.
“We had these comments and suggestions and foresight, some of my colleagues and I, when we sat here when we heard about the voucher plan when we were doing this,” Davis said. “So what I don’t want this chamber to get confused with is, we are still dealing with a $4 billion program.”
Sen. Rosalind Osgood, a Democrat who also signed onto the bill, said she did not support the initial voucher rollout.
“A lot of times in government, we roll out things and the implementation part of it is a disaster,” Osgood said. “And what I appreciate today is not only did you keep us from committing legislative malfeasance, but you brought it publicly that we identified that we implemented a program, we couldn’t find students, we still have questions about money but we were open and transparent about it and we are addressing it through this bill.”
