Irene’s six-year-old daughter hummed to herself as she delighted in setting up a tea party on the carpeted living room floor, complete with a plastic raspberry tart. The sunlight of the bright summer afternoon filtered through the window, illuminating the Broward County townhome.
Last school year, Irene switched her daughter, who has autism, from a public charter school to a private school. Irene planned on paying for the school with the state voucher meant for students with disabilities.
“She thrives the best in the setting where it's maximum 10 children,” Irene said. “Her speech has improved so much. Her math, they're saying that she's close to third grade level in math.” The difference in her daughter since she started at the new school has been “night and day.”
The enthusiasm was short-lived. When the Florida Department of Education checked enrollment records, the then-kindergartener’s name came up in her old school’s enrollment. The state froze the voucher to prevent duplicating funds to the public and private schools at the same time.
Ever since, Irene's been emailing and calling everyone she could think of — local representatives, lawmakers, state officials — to get her daughter’s enrollment status accurately updated.
She ended up having to pay the tuition out of pocket last year.
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“As single parent who's trying to pay a rent that's pretty close to $2,000 a month on top of bills and then her food, she has special dietary needs, it's a lot for any one person to deal with,” Irene said. “I thought that this school choice program was designed to help kids like her just not get overlooked.”
Irene asked WLRN not to use her full name or her daughter’s name since she's still fighting for the funding and doesn't want to jeopardize her case.
Irene’s daughter uses the Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities. The amount a student receives depends on an evaluation by the school district of the severity of the disability. The higher the evaluation score, the more support they need. The voucher can be used to get therapy, tutoring, helpful tools or be put towards tuition.
Florida’s voucher program began nearly 30 years ago to help students with disabilities and those from low-income families and has gone through different phases over the years.
“In my judgement, HB1 was done too quickly. I'm a strong supporter of school choice and parental choice, but this could have been done with a little more planning.”Sen. Don Gaetz.
The state took a big bet when it expanded its voucher program to make it easier for parents to opt for school choice — or exercise education freedom, as proponents say. State lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis passed the landmark law HB1 in 2023 to expand access to school vouchers, opening the floodgates for any child to use public money for private schooling.
Not enough guardrails were implemented at the time of the bill’s passing to ensure students received the voucher, also known as scholarships, one influential state Republican senator told WLRN.
More than half a million students use state vouchers today, nearly double what it was two years ago.
“In my judgement, HB1 was done too quickly,” state Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, told WLRN. “I'm a strong supporter of school choice and parental choice, but this could have been done, I think, with a little more planning.”
For most voucher programs, the money comes through the state to a nonprofit called Step Up For Students, which then doles it out to families.
A state audit from earlier this year found errors in how Step Up For Students managed applications and funding in the period immediately after the expansion. The report found many cases of delayed voucher payments, leading to a fatiguing limbo of funding instability for students, their parents and education providers.
Private school providers have also felt the financial impacts of voucher payment problems. A dozen school leaders filed a demand letter in April to Step Up For Students and the state urging them to release the funds.
Step Up For Students spokesperson Patrick Gibbons said in an email to WLRN that the rapid growth of the voucher program in 2023 presented challenges. However, the organization made operational improvements to ease the transition, including hiring hundreds of customer service agents and providing online application support materials. Now, Gibbons wrote, it’s providing the half a million scholarships with “increased excellence and efficiency.”
“ We're hearing about it in our Senate office a whole lot more,” said Gaetz. “This problem is not getting better as it's getting older — it's getting worse as it's getting older.”
Complications after the expansion
The state and funding organizations had about 60 days to prepare ahead of a heightened application season and school year. Step Up For Students, the largest voucher administrator in the state, went from servicing 258,000 students to 420,000 in four months.
Today, it manages more than 500,000.
The state Auditor General's report studied the period immediately after the expansion. It found errors in how Step Up For Students managed applications and funding during that time, including that Step Up For Students incorrectly prioritized new applicants for Unique Abilities instead of students who had already been using it.
It also found some “Unique Abilities” vouchers were over-funded, exceeding the state-regulated limit of $50,000 per student account. A larger stream of funds to some recipients could deplete the faucet for other students, the audit cautioned.
“Delays in reimbursements could cause the parents and guardians of scholarship participants to experience financial hardships and lose confidence in the programs,” the audit warned.
Gretchen Schoenhaar, Chief Executive Officer for Step Up For Students, responded to the audit findings and recommendations in a letter in April, citing the report covered “a unique period of history growth and opportunity” that happened “in a compressed time.” Schoenhaar wrote Step Up For Students is “proud” to have learned administrative lessons in that challenging time.
The organization maintained all eligible students with disabilities who were renewing their vouchers received funding that year.
“ Parents are scared they’re going to lose their funding. I have parents come in here every day crying."Maria Preston of Diverse Abilities Center in Southwest Ranches.
According to data from Step Up For Students, 10% of awarded vouchers last school year weren't funded – that’s more than 54,000 vouchers. For just the Unique Abilities vouchers, that number was nearly 8,500.
When a scholarship is awarded, it means an eligible student was offered the scholarship. However, Step Up For Students spokesperson Gibbons said it doesn’t necessarily mean the student will use it. Vouchers may not be paid out for a number of reasons. The top one being a lack of availability at parents’ desired school for their child, according to a recent survey by the organization, followed by parents feeling the voucher amount is inadequate for their child’s needs.
Still, money ends up in the wrong hands for a number of reasons, according to Gaetz, who is on the committee that oversees school funding.
For one, the Department of Education can’t track about 23,000 Florida students — about $230 million in taxes — in a time-sensitive way. With so many students moving between public and private schools, “the money doesn't catch up with the student or the money goes to the wrong place.”
“It's very unfair to the scholarship families,” Gaetz said. “That's unfair to school districts and it's bad financial stewardship.”
The voucher payment schedule and a limited application window are also problematic.
The platform both parents and educators use for managing student vouchers is another factor, requiring both parents and school administrators to approve the invoice amount for the voucher. The longer it takes for a parent or school to approve it, the longer the payment delay.
Representatives from the state Department of Education did not respond to WLRN’s requests for comment.
‘A pattern of systemic dysfunction’
School leaders that serve children with disabilities say they are facing tough times as the funding stream for vouchers has become unreliable.
The demand letter submitted to Step Up For Students and the state Department of Education from the 12 private school leaders reads that “unresolved issues have created a pattern of systemic dysfunction that places an undue burden on schools serving Florida’s most vulnerable student populations.”
The letter expresses that Step Up For Students and/or the Department of Education may be liable for misappropriation of funds, misrepresentation, negligent supervision and “promissory estoppel” — broken promises.
Maria Preston, theowner and clinical director of Diverse Abilities Center in Southwest Ranches in Broward County, is one of the school leaders on the letter.
While many students with intellectual disabilities thrive in public schools with an Individualized Education Plan, smaller private schools like Preston’s offer an alternative for parents whose child needs other support to flourish. For them, it’s indispensable.
“ Parents are scared, they’re scared they’re going to lose their funding,” Preston said. “I have parents come in here every day crying… Either they can't afford something” or they need additional help.
The funding headaches for Preston started in September 2023, just months after the state expanded voucher access. She said voucher delays from that time are still affecting her school today.
“This has been a battle for years,” Preston said.
Angela Seaton, owner of Square Pegs Learning Center in Panama City, is also joining the letter. She has withdrawn hundreds of thousands of dollars from her retirement savings to keep the school going.
“It's just unfortunate that we aren't able to do our jobs because we're busy chasing down nickels and dimes to make ends meet,” Seaton said.
The funding issues have cost resources she’s able to provide for students, like experimental learning to help learn everyday tasks.
“There's clearly a need in our area for this but I can't keep doing it over and over and keep coming up against brick walls,” Seaton said.
Gibbons, the Step Up For Students spokesperson, said that the organization has worked closely with the school leaders who filed the demand letter. He said the non-profit is confident their records will show the commitment to servicing the schools and “that their claims are unwarranted.”
Step Up For Students and the school leaders have been communicating to ensure all eligible students receive their funding.
Pointing fingers
For months, Irene, the Broward mom to the six-year-old with autism, has been hunting for answers about the status of last year’s voucher.
“It's just disheartening. Do I just give up? Do I move out of Florida? How do I save up to move out of Florida? Like I want to be in a place where she can get the support she needs,” Irene said, “but it's just like a lot of finger pointing.”
READ MORE: Florida’s legislative session has seen many efforts to boost charter schools
State Rep. Dan Daley, D-Coral Springs, has been seeking answers on behalf of Irene and her daughter.
He pressed education leaders from district to state level about finding a resolution for Irene. “This is something that should have been fixed within minutes, not months,” he wrote in the letter.
“Everyone blames someone else, but no one is taking responsibility to get this resolved,” said Kim Schnitzius, an aide Rep. Daley.
State Sen. Gaetz wants to prevent these problems altogether. “It’s not a matter of finger pointing and deciding who the bad person is. It's a matter of figuring out a system that is resilient to the environment in which we're in,” he said. “And we need to make sure the dollars follow the student.”
Gaetz led a Senate bill this year that aimed to solve some of the more common problems affecting voucher families. It addressed the issues in timely tracking students, the application window and the payment schedule. However, it failed in the House of Representatives.
With more than $4 billion of state funds going into sustaining the country’s largest universal voucher program, Gaetz said, “we ought to have decent oversight to make sure that all of those dollars go to the right people in the right place at the right time because, unfortunately, it's not what's happening now.”
In an email to WLRN, Step Up For Students Chair John Kirtley said the organization is “extremely grateful” Florida’s lawmakers have bolstered the expansion of educational options.
“We support the Legislature’s efforts to increase the accuracy and efficiency of scholarship funding and will implement whatever solution they decide is best," he wrote.
Gaetz doesn’t want people to lose sight of Florida proudly being “the most parent-friendly, school choice-friendly state in the union” with its long history of supporting special-need students. But the “wrinkles” affecting countless students need to be worked out.
“ If we had strong legislative oversight, which is what we provided for in the Senate bill, we wouldn't allow problems like that to occur,” Gaetz said. "That's unconscionable. It's wrong and it's avoidable.”
