State Sen. Don Gaetz has introduced a bill in the Florida Legislature to bring more efficiency and transparency to the state's popular school voucher program by proposing the separation of private school voucher funds from public school funds.
The bill proposal comes after the Florida Auditor General concluded the state Department of Education was riddled with pitfalls in how it manages vouchers, including a shortfall of $398 million dollars for the voucher program during the 2024-25 school year.
Gaetz sponsored a similar bill last year to address the systematic shortcomings.
The auditor presented its findings to Senate and House legislative committees overseeing education funding. Both have held meetings in recent weeks on the topic of voucher mismanagement.
"We have to separate the funding for public schools from the funding for the educational choice that's not public schools," Gaetz told WLRN. "By mixing it all together and then trying to unscramble it, there is a system which is designed to work, but turns out to fail simply because it's hard to unscramble an egg — and that's what's happening in this system every year."
The focus at the Legislature level comes after a months-long WLRN investigation revealed the state mismanaged school vouchers and was unable to accurately track student enrollment, resulting in delayed and missing funds to families and private school leaders.
A demand letter submitted earlier this year to the state Department of Education and Step Up For Students, the biggest voucher funding organization in the state, from 12 private school leaders cited “unresolved issues have created a pattern of systemic dysfunction that places an undue burden on schools serving Florida’s most vulnerable student populations.”
Maria Preston, the owner and clinical director of Diverse Abilities Center in Southwest Ranches in Broward County, is one of the school leaders signing on to the letter.
“ Parents are scared, they’re scared they’re going to lose their funding,” Preston told WLRN earlier this year. “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 with the landmark law HB1, opening the floodgates for any child to use public money for private schooling.
This bill is "just the beginning," Preston told WLRN on Monday, "but there's a lot more that needs to be hammered out."
Not enough guardrails were implemented at the time of the bill’s passing to ensure students received the voucher dollars, lawmakers have said. More than half a million students use state vouchers today, nearly double what it was two years ago.
The Florida Education Department releases funds to voucher funding organizations. The organizations are in charge of moving the money into student accounts. Families and educators have felt no one has taken responsibility for the problems, pointing fingers at each other.
Keva Hampton, who leads a Jacksonville private school, is another of the dozen educators who have signed on to the letter. She told WLRN she wants to see more accountability — from lawmakers, the education department and voucher funding organizations. "Somebody needs to be blamed," Hampton said Monday.
"The hard fact is that the problem is the law. We have met the enemy and it's us," said Gaetz, who is on the Senate PreK-12 Appropriations Committee. "The Legislature passed this law, the Legislature engineered this law, it was done with all the best of intentions. However, now that we're a couple of years in, now we realize that we've got to change the way that the system functions in order to be more timely, more accurate and better stewards."
'Plagued with inconsistencies'
Two years since the hastened expansion, problems have spiraled out of control, according to the Florida Auditor General report.
The report, presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on PreK-12 Education and the House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee , listed 16 accountability challenges for the 2024-25 school year, including the timely processing of enrollment verification and "challenges to the prudent management of State education funds." Recommendations on how to address each item were also presented.
The system is "plagued with inconsistencies," said Deputy Auditor General Matthew Tracy at the latest subcommittee meeting.
The audit also found hundreds of voucher accounts for students with disabilities exceeded the maximum legal amount per year — totaling over $2.3 million by the end of the year.
Over the meetings, legislators were seemingly surprised to learn that part of the issue with tracking students is that not every one has a unique ID number, as required by Florida law, making it harder to track applications.
READ MORE: 'We're all getting frustrated': Florida lawmakers desperate to solve school voucher funding mishaps
Almost 24,000 Florida students had their funds frozen last school year because they were identified as being recipients of vouchers and enrolled in public school. Of those, about 80% were on the type of voucher meant for students with disabilities.
Today, the state does not know where students are enrolled at key points in the school year, with taxpayers paying for 30,000 students the state can't pinpoint.
"The cross-check is living months behind the actual payment for [vouchers]," Tracy said.
In a letter signed by Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, the department agreed with the recommendations outlined in the audit and said it's collaborating with districts and lawmakers to make improvements.
The department is also working to 'backpay' families and educators who suffered delayed or missing payments last school year. Recently, nearly $17 million were released to help pay what families and schools are owed.
Public schools have been confronting a drastic drop in enrollment that has resulted in less funding this school year.
State Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, chair of the PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee in the House, said millions have been released to about 85% of students missing funds from last year, as the organizations and state work together to identify students to 'backpay.'
The toll has also been sizable for school districts. The legislature advanced $47 million to make them whole for last year’s deficits.
