Sen. Don Gaetz has filed a bill aimed at improving transparency and accountability in Florida’s expansive school choice programs after a state audit revealed major gaps in tracking students and funding.
SB 318, co-sponsored by Sens. Danny Burgess and Corey Simon, would overhaul how the state funds and monitors its Family Empowerment Scholarship and other school choice programs.
The proposal was filed in response to findings from a recent Auditor General report showing that the state could not verify the locations of roughly 30,000 scholarship students and could not account for more than $270 million in funding transfers on any given day. Audit findings were presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Pre-K-12 Education, chaired by Burgess, on Wednesday.
“We implemented the nation’s largest universal scholarship program in a very expedited, but well-intended manner over the last few years,” Burgess said in a statement.
“We can all be very proud of how far this program has come in a short amount of time,” he added. “However, to ensure our school choice programs live up to their full potential and promise, there are challenges we need to address.”
The measure would create a separate funding category for the Family Empowerment Scholarship within the Florida Education Finance Program, require monthly rather than quarterly payments, and direct the Florida Department of Education to assign student ID numbers for all scholarship recipients to better track enrollment and prevent duplicate payments.
SB 318 would also reduce administrative fees to fund more scholarships through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, and require annual end-of-year audits. It would also establish application deadlines and require the Department of Education to cross-check enrollment data between public and private schools.
Gaetz, a former Senate President and Okaloosa County Superintendent, said the bill aims to protect the integrity of Florida’s school choice programs as they continue to grow.
“We don’t have a perfect bill,” Gaetz said in a statement. “But we have a bill which fixes these issues, which, left unaddressed, will continue to worsen and threaten to disrupt and imperil school choice in Florida.”
