Florida’s Budget Crisis: Tax-Funded Vouchers Set to Defund Public Schools and Cut Advanced Programs

Florida Legislators are Poised to Fully Funding Vouchers While DeFunding Advanced Placement and Other Advanced Coursework in Florida’s Public High Schools – It’s Not Like They Weren’t Warned…

When your child returns to school this fall and finds that their favorite programs—such as Advanced Placement (AP), Dual Enrollment, International Baccalaureate, and Career and Technical Certifications—have been cut, you can thank the Florida Legislature for its misguided budget priorities.

Tax-funded vouchers have consistently been shown to defund public schools. This isn’t because the money follows public school students fleeing to private options, but because, when families, whose children are ALREADY in private schools, are offered a tax-funded discount for their private school tuition, they flock to apply, and private schools encourage it. When states pass universal voucher programs, they soon find themselves covering the costs for hundreds of thousands of new students who never attended public schools, which ends up draining public school budgets. This has happened in states like New Hampshire, Arizona, and Ohio—and now, it’s happening in Florida.

The Florida Senate’s proposed 2025-26 PreK-12 budget:

• Slashes more than $290 million in funding for Advanced Placement, Dual Enrollment, and other academically challenging coursework in public schools.
• Provides a per-pupil funding increase that is well below the current inflation rate of 3.0% and inadequate to fund predicted increases in property insurance and health care premiums.
• Diverts 70% of the proposed overall funding increase to tax-funded vouchers for (mostly religious) private schools.

Budgets reflect priorities, and the Florida Senate has prioritized funding private school vouchers over expanding successful and desirable academic programs in public high schools.

For context, the House budget is even worse. In addition to slashing funding for advanced college-level courses, the House also cuts funding for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs designed to prepare students for the workforce.

Floridians should be outraged.

The Florida Senate’s 2025-26 K-12 funding formula (or FEFP, the Florida Education Finance Program) cuts up to $290 million in funding for advanced courses in public high schools by reducing incentive funding (also known as add-on weights) by 50%. Last week, Senator Burgess, Chair of Senate PreK-12 Appropriations, claimed that the $200 million cut from college readiness add-on funding would be retained in the FEFP to provide districts with “additional flexibility.” However, the staff analysis of his budget bill tells a different story:

“The proposed reductions to the acceleration program bonuses may provide an estimated $292 million savins to the state.” (Note that there’s no mention of the fiscal impact on public schools that rely on this funding to expand, enhance, and maintain these programs—yet this impact will undoubtedly occur.)

Additionally, the Senate’s proposed 2025-26 funding formula allocates funds for 60,000 new taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school students who have never attended public schools (at an increased cost of over $700 million), raising the cost of private school vouchers by 25%.

The total FEFP funding will increase by $984.5 million, but more than $700 million will go to new vouchers. This year, Florida will spend more than $4 billion annually on private school vouchers.

Currently, of the 3.2 million students funded through the FEFP, 86% attend public schools (district-managed and charter schools), while 14% use publicly funded vouchers for private schools. Yet, over 70% of the increased FEFP funding is being allocated to vouchers.

And in the coming years, this amount will only grow. Local communities will be left to cover more and more of the gap through required local effort, additional voter-approved millages, or districts will face financial collapse

Florida’s legislature has created a system that cannot sustain itself. With a pro-voucher supermajority in Tallahassee, none of the legislators are considering reducing the number or the value of the vouchers promised in HB1. Instead, the cuts to public schools will continue.

This will create a vicious cycle: the defunding of public schools will eliminate popular programs, increase class sizes, and close neighborhood schools “for efficiency.” Families affected by these cuts will search for alternatives, and even more public money will flow to private schools and homeschooling. How long before school districts go bankrupt, and families are left scrambling for private options?

It is all by design, leading to the dismantling and privatization of public education.

If you have a child or grandchild who relies on Advanced Placement courses, Dual Enrollment, or other acceleration programs offered in public schools, you must contact your legislators now! Find them here and here. The budget bills are scheduled to be heard on Wednesday, April 9th, and they need to hear from you before it’s too late.

They can’t say they weren’t warned. As I wrote in March of 2023:

“What ESA expansion in both Arizona and New Hampshire has shown is these bills defund public schools, but NOT because “the money follows the child” in mass exoduses from public school. By and large public school families remain at their public school. Public schools are defunded when legislatures vastly underestimate the willingness of homeschoolers and self-pay private school families to apply for “free money.” When New Hampshire and Arizona failed to account for massive participation by students new to their state’s funding formula, their budgeting error reduced funding that could have gone to public schools. 

Florida seems ready to make the same mistakes, and if they do, public schools will bear the brunt of their miscalculations.

When asked specifically about the experience in Arizona, neither HB1 sponsor, Kaylee Tuck, nor SB202 sponsor, Corey Simon, seemed aware nor particularly interested. Rep Tuck was unaware of the issues in Arizona but  she made it clear that the goal of HB1 was to allow families of all incomes, even millionaires, access to public education dollars. When Senator Osgood asked Senator Simon (at 43:30) if he had taken into consideration “the lessons learned in Arizona about the ballooning costs” associated with underestimating participation, Simon’s response was “I have not looked at Arizona’s bill extensively. I would like to think that we’re trailblazing the way in Florida, continuing to lead on education.” He admitted he didn’t know what the issues in Arizona were but believed that his bill was “a step in the right direction for our students and our families.””

Now, Florida’s public schools are at a critical crossroads. The time to act is now.