Where Did the Money Go?

ByAccountabaloney

Florida’s school funding shortfall demands transparency — release the Fourth Calculation.

Florida relies on two official student counts each year — one in October and another in February — to allocate funding to school districts through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). But after the October 2024 Count, major red flags appeared. Nearly 30,000 students (at an estimated cost of almost $250 million) were identified as both receiving a voucher and attending a public school. In some districts, almost all (more than all in one district) of their state funding had been absorbed by voucher payouts.

When the February 2025 Count came around, the results were apparently so alarming that the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) never released them. Instead, the Department relied on the concerning October Count to fund schools for the rest of the year. By spring, the FEFP had run out of money before fully funding public schools. Districts were left holding the empty bag.

What was in that February Count that led to its suppression? As lawmakers consider funding reforms next session, there must be a full and transparent accounting of the 2024–25 funding breakdown. Taxpayers deserve answers.
Release the Fourth Calculation — and order a complete audit of the 2024–25 FEFP.

How We Got Here

Something unusual happened last year (2024-25) with Florida’s K-12. Expansion of the state’s universal voucher program left the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) and Step Up for Students, the Scholarship Funding Organization, unable to verify whether more than 27,000 students were enrolled in public school or using a publicly funded scholarship/voucher leaving the primary funding formula (the Florida Education Finance Program or FEFP) with a $47 million deficit. Word on the street is, after the state paid out the final payment for vouchers, they ran out of money to properly fund the districts.

What happened? It’s still not entirely clear. Representatives from the FLDOE cited difficulties verifying student enrollment through “cross-checks.” As a result, some districts weren’t funded for students who sat in their classrooms all year, while voucher payments were paused for families whose children appeared on both district and scholarship lists. In some cases, students with similar names caused further delays in funding. Many voucher recipients have never attended public schools and therefore lack official student ID numbers, making verification even harder.

The House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee has already begun discussions to prevent a repeat of last year’s problems.

Still, no one is asking the key question: What happened to the Fourth Calculation of the FEFP?

The Missing Fourth Calculation

Florida’s public schools are funded on a per pupil basis, based on student attendance during two official count weeks, one in October and another in February. Usually, the FEFP issues 5 official calculations, adjusting payments based on changes in estimates or documented attendance.

  • The First Calculation is based on estimates and the newly proposed budget from the Legislature.
  • The Second Calculation is released before school begins and reflects updated estimates.
  • The Third Calculation reflects the actual student counts during the October Count, it is usually released in mid to late January but this past year wasn’t released until March in 2025. The 2024-25 Third Calculation survey had significant red flags.
    • There were approximately 23,000 students reported for funding by both a school district and a scholarship funding organization. [23,000 students at about $9,000 each represents $270 million of inappropriately allocated funds.]
    • In addition, the initial third calculation showed one school district with a negative amount of state FEFP funds (FES vouchers can only be funded through state contributions).
  • The Fourth Calculation is meant to reflects the actual student counts during the February Count. Usually released in April or May, the 2024-25 Fourth Calculation has never been released (and it is rumored that there is no intention of doing so). Rather than making adjustments based on the Fourth Calculation, the 2024-25 FEFP relied entirely on the October counts.
  • The Final Calculation makes adjustments as needed with addition or subtraction from the next year’s budget and is usually released in the following Fall.

Rep. Persons-Mulicka, Chair of the House PreK-12 Budget subcommittee, says she has asked the Department to complete the final calculation for 2024-25 and that data is “currently under review.”

A Word About the FEFP

Several times during the recent House PreK-12 Budget sessions, panelists from the FLDOE and Step Up for Students noted the challenges of working within Florida’s 50-year-old FEFP. The formula wasn’t designed to account for students frequently moving in and out of schools, and to some, it seems antiquated in today’s era of school choice.

I urge caution before attempting a full redesign. Florida’s FEFP has long been a national model, fairly funding students based on their needs, regardless of where they live in the state’s diverse communities. It has withstood multiple legal challenges and has served public schools effectively for decades.

That said, there may be ways to provide the flexibility needed for universal vouchers without undermining the public school funding formula. Some proposed ideas include:

  • Creating a state-funded categorical specifically for vouchers
  • Removing vouchers from the FEFP entirely and funding them separately, preventing overfunding of vouchers from defunding public schools
  • Funding FES vouchers as if they were their own district

Problems Persist

This year, even before the 2025 October count, another 22,000 students have been identified as both receiving a voucher and attending a public school. Most of these students are sitting in classrooms daily, yet districts aren’t being funded for them because their names are on a scholarship list. The FLDOE has asked school districts to help perform the critical cross-checking process — a time-consuming, unfunded task.

In short: there was a serious funding breakdown last year, and early signs suggest the problem continues. Full transparency demands the release of the Fourth Calculation to clarify how the FEFP overspent its budget last year and to restore trust in Florida’s K-12 funding system.

Legislative Efforts: Improving Transparency and Efficiency

Last spring, the Florida Senate raised alarms about persistent funding and accountability problems following the rapid expansion of the state’s universal school voucher system. Recognizing the need for better ways to track where students were at key points throughout the school year, Senator Don Gaetz championed SB 7030, designed to “create reasonable timeframes and mechanisms to improve both transparency and efficiency in education funding.”

The Senate passed SB 7030 in a bipartisan fashion. The House killed the bill.

Clearly reforms are still needed. The 2024-25 FEFP calculation was an unmitigated disaster, leaving districts to deal with millions of dollars of lost funding at the end of the fiscal year.

Conclusion: Follow the Money. Release the Data.

This year, lawmakers appear ready to revisit these issues. But before new reforms are drafted, they must fully understand what went wrong. The simplest, most transparent step is to release the missing Fourth Calculation. Only then can Florida ensure that every public dollar follows the student as intended — and that both taxpayers and schools can trust the numbers.

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