Hidden Voucher Expansion is Defunding Florida’s Public Schools – Report

“This enormous increase in the flow of public dollars to fund private education has happened so quickly that many Floridians are likely unaware of the financial impact being placed upon public school districts and the way these voucher programs are affecting the availability of their tax dollars for public education.” – Florida’s Hidden Voucher Expansion: Over $1 Billion from Public Schools to Fund Private Education

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In 2019, Accountabaloney predicted that placing the newly proposed Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) inside the state’s public education funding formula (Florida Education Finance Program or FEFP) would direct more public education funds towards private, mostly religious, schools while giving local taxpayers the illusion that more of their money was going to their local public schools.

It turns out we were right.

Last year, following celebration of Florida’s “historic” $23 Billion Education Budget, more than $1 Billion of education tax dollars were funneled directly from the 2021-2022 FEFP, the primary source of public school funding, to private school vouchers. The shift dramatically impacted school district budgets across the state, yet the general public remains mostly unaware of the diversion of increasing amounts of their tax dollars away from their public local schools towards privately school vouchers.

A recent research report by Education Law Center (ELC) and Florida Policy Institute (FPI), entitled “Florida’s Hidden Voucher Expansion: Over $1 Billion from Public Schools to Fund Private Education” highlights the impacts of Florida recent voucher expansion on local school districts. The entire report is just 4 pages long. Read it! (And share it with your legislators!)

The report finds:

• Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, funding redirected to private education from the Florida Education Financing Program (FEFP), the state’s school funding formula, increased by $1 billion.
• The increase in diverted funds outpaced increases in public school funding.
• As of 2022-23, an estimated 10% of the $13.2 billion in state aid for public schools will be diverted to private education through the FES voucher program, up from 3% in 2019-20.
• The entire cost of private school vouchers, comprising both state and local funding, is diverted from school districts’ state aid; therefore, districts that are more reliant on local funding will see proportionately larger state aid cuts.

When 2019’s SB7070 created the Family Empowerment Scholarship, bill sponsor Senator Manny Diaz Jr. insisted there would be no impact on school district funding, despite the vouchers being directly funded through the FEFP, because districts would continue to be funded for the students attending their schools. 

It appears he was wrong. 

Two years later, with the passage of HB7045 in 2021, the requirement for prior public school attendance was eliminated and higher-income families were able to qualify with an expansion of income requirements making it virtually impossible for school districts to accurately predict the number of students (or “Full Time Equivalents” or FTE) in the upcoming budget year, the basis for the FEFP funding and district budgeting.

Impact on Budgeting

The report (page 2) does an excellent job of explaining the impact of FES voucher expansion on school district budgeting. Florida’s school districts must adopt their budget before the beginning of the school year and often must create budget drafts even before the Governor signs the State Budget. Most of the budget is for fixed costs like teacher salaries and facility operations. A significant increase in the diversion of funds to private school vouchers, especially after the start of the school year, can have substantial negative impacts on budget planning and may lead to deficits or layoffs.

District budgets depend on enrollment projections but districts have no control over the number of students who apply for vouchers in any given year. Districts are now expected to create budgets based on predictions not only of how many students will enroll in district managed and charter schools, but new voucher enrollments as well.

To make things worse, the first FEFP calculations the Florida Department of Education released in April 2021 for the 2021/22 school year, contained NO mention of FES funds to be redirected to private school vouchers. By the fourth calculation in May 2022, districts were expected to hand over more than $1 billion to provide funding for FES and McKay vouchers. By the end of the 20/21 school year, Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest school district, was asked to turn over nearly $190 Million to the voucher programs.

Disparate Impact: 

The impact of the state voucher program varies by district. Data for each district is provided in the report’s Appendix. Here are a few examples.

• In 2022-23, Gadsden County is the most highly impacted by voucher costs, losing 9% of their total FEFP budget to vouchers.
• Hardee County, at the other end of the spectrum, loses 1% of their budget in 2022-23.
• In 2022-23 in Miami-Dade, an estimated $225 million public school dollars will be diverted to private education from the district, representing 8% of the district’s total FEFP budget and 18% of the state aid portion of the budget.
• In 2022-23, Sarasota County, vouchers make up 23% of the state aid portion (4% of their overall budget).

An interactive map allows residents to see the impact of the expansion, over time, in their own community.

For example, in my community (Monroe County): Just 4% of the State’s contribution to our FEFP funding went to vouchers in Academic Year 2020/21 ($578K), but a full 17% of the State’s contribution to our FEFP funding will pay for vouchers in Monroe in 2022/23 ($2.5 Million).

Recommendations:

The report states “Maintaining public funds in public schools and increasing state support for public education are the keys to improving education outcomes in Florida,” and recommends legislative actions to help districts and students in the short-term: 

• Require the Florida Department of Education to increase transparency in the movement of funds, including greater visibility and up-to-date figures;
• Halt voucher eligibility expansions and enact a periodic income recertification process;
• Implement firm restrictions on the amount of funds a district may be required to redirect annually to private education to allow districts to better manage their budgets; and
• Consider state funding in the form of transitional aid to support public school districts seeing a significant increase in voucher costs.”

Conclusion:

The $1.3 Billion shift via the FEFP outlined in the report is in addition to a potential $1.1 billion in public dollars diverted from the state treasury through vouchers financed by corporate tax credits. The vouchers (referred to as “scholarships” because of the public’s general unfavorable opinion of  vouchers) are used primarily to pay tuition at private, mostly religious, schools, with little to no state academic or operational oversight. (See the excellent investigative report “Schools Without Rules” for more about the lack of regulation in Florida’s voucher programs).

Governor DeSantis recently announced plans to convert the current Florida’s voucher programs into Education Savings Accounts. Unlike tuition vouchers, ESAs are the equivalent of publicly funded, edu-debit cards which can be used by parents to piece together an education by purchasing individual products from an education marketplace. ESAs place the responsibility for piecing together an adequate education squarely on the parents, privatizing not simply public education but the responsibility for providing that education as well. Universal ESAs are the privatizers’ end-game and should be expected to defund and disrupt our public schools even further.

The press release accompanying the launching of the report says

“Voucher expansion has happened quickly and relatively quietly, opening the door for public funds to flow to private education with very little accountability for how funds are spent and few protections for students’ civil rights or against discrimination.”

Continued voucher expansion will continue to divert limited education funding to unaccountable private entities and further defund our public schools. We predicted as much years ago and we need Floridians to start paying attention.

What can you do? Start by reading the report and sending it to your legislators. Ask them to protect our students and public schools from further defunding and privatization.