It’s the Florida House’s turn to address school voucher accounting shortfalls. The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved its package to fix problems uncovered by a state audit that created major consternation among lawmakers.
The package SB 318, amending the laws governing the state voucher system, received support in the upper chamber, but its fate is now in the hands of the House, which hasn’t proposed a fix.
“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,” Sen. Don Gaetz, a Republican from Crestview, the sponsor, said during the first floor sitting of the session.
School daze: Rapid expansion of voucher program leaves public, private schools underpaid
In October, lawmakers in the House spent hours questioning Department of Education officials and administrators with scholarship funding organizations about how state funding navigates its way to schools, private and public. The universal vouchers are available for all families, regardless of income.
Not long after, a state audit found that the money was not moving the way it was supposed to. The audit concluded that “funding did not follow the child,” counter to the rallying cry of school-choice proponents that tax dollars should be allocated to students, not schools.
“Fraudsters, unfortunately, have discovered our school choice program and they scammed millions of dollars by creating fictitious students. Not Minnesota, but not a good look,” Gaetz said, insisting that lawmakers must not let the budgeting problems persist, and pointing to alleged fraud in Minnesota‘s daycare system.
READ MORE: As lawmakers fix Florida's school voucher system, educators, students cope with financial fallout
“North of a million” dollars are associated with fraudulent activity, Gaetz estimated during a news conference following the vote. Last year, the Phoenix reported about a private school receiving vouchers to educate students more than 100 miles away.
The Senate bill, more than 4,000 lines long, looks to establish clearer application and scholarship acceptance deadlines and to boost competition among scholarship-funding organizations, which manage the flow from the state to the schools, while providing more oversight to the state.
“A lot of times in government, we roll out things and the implementation part of it is a disaster, 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, transparent about it, and we are addressing it through this bill,” Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood of Fort Lauderdale said.
The governor, Senate, and House all have recognized a need to make changes. The path to get there is not clear, however. The House has yet to propose a fix.
A key provision from the Senate, differing from House leadership’s philosophy, is separating line items in the budget, creating an appropriation specifically for funding school choice vouchers, separate from overall school spending.
The Senate bill would expand the education stabilization fund to $250 million, something Gaetz said he believes could help the House agree to terms. The fund is supposed to help supplement funding for schools that enroll fewer students than the budget projected.
In the past four years, the voucher program has grown rapidly, serving about 500,000 students during the past school year. In 2021-2022, the program had served about 200,000 students. In 2024-2025, the program dished out $3.17 billion in Family Empowerment Scholarship vouchers and recorded another $804.5 million in scholarship programs funded through corporate tax credits, totaling nearly $4 billion dollars.
The Senate approved an amendment eliminating a declining-enrollment supplement from the original conversation. Gaetz indicated he has “hope” that, in the budget-making process, that provision will resurface.
Voucher funding problems by the numbers
- 22-page-audit.
- According to Gaetz, at any given moment, 30,000 students are unaccounted for.
- Those students represent $270 million in education funding.
- In 2024-2025, the DOE paid $655 million to scholarship funding organizations before school started, creating a “paying and chasing” system.
- At least $7 million were sent to families by scholarship funding organizations before verifying if the student was attending a private school.
- The education budget was $47 million short at the end of the last fiscal year, leaving some districts without money.
- The audit found that at the end of last fiscal year, more than $400 million sat, unused, in scholarship accounts.
- At the end of the 2024-25 school year, nearly 300 accounts for students with disabilities held “excess balances,” or more than $50,000 each in unspent money. The sum of the excess alone was $2.3 million.
Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
