Gov. DeSantis signs on to federal Education Freedom Tax Credit

School choice proponents have something to celebrate this School Choice Week.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is announcing that he will join 23 other Republican Governors and embrace the Education Freedom Tax Credit. He says it will give “more resources, more options” and be a meaningful supplement to what Florida is already doing.

DeSantis was the only Republican Governor of any Southern State who hadn’t approved the school choice provision, which was included in the Big Beautiful Bill tax cut package signed by President Donald Trump last year.

“We don’t really know how many taxpayers are going to opt into this or not,” DeSantis said at Grace Christian School in Valrico.

“And we don’t know how many states, you know, are going to ultimately participate in this. But there is going to be some level of money to where students will be able to be eligible for some of these scholarships. And so this will start January of 2027.”

He also raised questions about the need to opt in at all.

“I’m not sure why they did that,” DeSantis said, noting that Florida and other states that support school choice have likely already approved policies promoting other schooling options.

“Where you really need these scholarships, you need to get into Chicago and give these kids a lifeline, right? You need to get into Los Angeles,” he added, suggesting that teachers’ unions in blue states will oppose opting in.

The credit will allow any entity to claim a tax credit of up to $1,700 a year to offset donations to any type of support for school choice educational scholarships. That would be on top of other scholarships offered by states.

Currently, Florida provides universal choice education scholarships to cover up to $9,000 in private school tuition. But if a family donated $1,700 on top of that to a state-authorized organization like Step Up For Students, which awards Florida’s school choice scholarships, the funding could be awarded for education purposes by Step Up, and the donor could get a deduction on federal income taxes equal to the among given.

DeSantis said he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t “subtract from what we’re doing” before opting in.

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A.G. Gancarski and Jacob Ogles of Florida Politics contributed to this report.