Lost in the Noise: A Major Shift in Florida School Choice
How Sunshine State Kids and Odyssey are positioning themselves to disrupt a system long dominated by Step Up for Students.
“If we create a great product and people come asking for it, we’ll open it to everybody.”
– Yosef Rosengarten, Director, Sunshine State Kids Foundation, to Florida State Board of Education, 2/20/26
Of course they will…
The approval of Sunshine State Kids Foundation as a Scholarship Funding Organization (SFO) for 2026 at this month’s State Board of Education meeting barely registered in the press, which has been focused on the rewrite of Schools of Hope co-location rules and the amendment of state social studies standards to include details about the recent extradition of Nicolás Maduro. Yet I predict that this decision will be looked back on as one of the most consequential in the history of school choice in Florida.
Florida’s legislators have long sought to expand the number of SFOs beyond the dominant Step Up For Students, the politically connected nonprofit that has managed the majority of Florida’s roughly $4–$5 billion voucher and ESA programs for more than two decades. Complaints from voucher recipients — and increasingly from private schools themselves — about delayed and inconsistent scholarship payments have become commonplace. A recent state audit found accountability and tracking problems that left substantial funding shortfalls and mismatches between funding and student enrollment. Most recently, a group of private schools filed a lawsuit alleging Step Up For Students mishandled millions in approved scholarship payments, exacerbating financial strain on schools and raising broader concerns about administration and oversight.
To the State Board, Sunshine State Kids presented itself as being focused on serving the unique scholarship needs Florida’s almost 15,000 Jewish Day School students. But, by partnering with Odyseey, Sunshine State Kids is not just another Florida nonprofit stepping into a niche space.
Odyssey is a New York–based, venture-capital-backed technology firm that has already won major contracts to administer ESA programs in multiple states, including the new Texas Education Freedom Account program. Its application materials make clear that it does not view itself as a small player: Odyssey markets itself as the only fully integrated, end-to-end ESA technology platform in the country, handling everything from eligibility verification and fund disbursement to direct vendor payments, compliance tracking, and customer service through automated systems designed to scale rapidly – all powered by artificial intelligence.
The company’s proposed phased growth strategy in Florida, establishing an initial foothold, then expanding capacity statewide in subsequent years, signals that this is about far more than adding a third scholarship funder. It is about introducing a national, technology-driven infrastructure into Florida’s voucher system, one built for rapid expansion and multi-state deployment.
Like Step Up, Odyssey has a history of using political engagement with strategic business positioning to win major public contracts. In Texas, Odyssey’s political activity – hiring key insiders, aligning with voucher promoters, and operating within a politically charged debate over ESA policy – helped it secure what many see as the industry’s “holy grail” contract.
Now, through its partnership with Sunshine State Kids, Odyssey is entering the Florida marketplace. Given its track record in other states, it would not be surprising to see the company actively engage in Florida’s political and policy landscape as it seeks to expand its footprint.
For decades, Step Up For Students has been allowed to operate as the dominant administrator of Florida’s scholarship programs. Approval of Sunshine State Kids, powered by Odyssey’s platform, creates the first serious structural competition in decades and the implications extend far beyond administration. This shift could influence:
• Who controls eligibility decisions
• How scholarship data, compliance, and auditing systems are managed
• Who governs and scales the provider marketplace
• How quickly the system expands
• How, and by whom, private student data is safeguarded
Florida’s voucher system is now one of the largest in the nation. The entity that controls its operational backbone will hold significant influence over both the direction and growth of school choice in the state going forward. That is why this decision matters, not just for Jewish Day School kids in 2026, but for the future of Florida’s ESA/scholarship ecosystem.
