Nathan Hoffman: Lawmakers should reject anti-family changes to the state’s student scholarship programs

Education freedom is alive and well in Florida, but an imminent threat could jeopardize the state’s longstanding leadership of the parental choice movement.

This may sound hyperbolic. It’s not. As the Legislature continues to negotiate a budget framework for the upcoming fiscal year, it will also consider dueling but related proposals from each chamber that would harm the state’s school choice scholarship programs. These changes will immediately negatively impact families that deserve the freedom to access schools that work best for their kids.

The changes are overly bureaucratic and unnecessary. For instance, the Senate wants to require all 500,000 families who’ve already been approved for a scholarship for the coming school year to submit new paperwork that’s never been required before—or risk losing their scholarship on July 1. This is profoundly unfair to families who have operated under the current rules and already received notification that their child has been awarded a scholarship.

Most concerningly, the Senate proposes to remove scholarship funding from the school funding formula and instead fund scholarships as a line-item appropriation outside of the funding formula. Effectively, this will mean Florida is no longer a true universal school choice state because a waitlist will be created if there is more demand for scholarships than what the legislature appropriates. It will also make it easier for less-friendly legislatures to cap scholarship amounts and growth in the programs altogether.

For the House’s part, they have proposed a restriction that would essentially create another scholarship cap based purely on where students live. Because scholarships are entirely funded by state dollars, school districts, i.e., counties, with lower state funding revenues have fewer state dollars to provide as scholarships. Under the House’s proposal, scholarships could not exceed the allocated funding for that county.

This means any new family that seeks a scholarship in a county already at this “cap” would be denied.

A fix to this issue would be to provide a targeted supplemental fund that ensures families aren’t locked out of education opportunities just because they happen to live in one of these counties.

Proposals from both chambers would place new restrictive deadlines on families. Certain requirements would force parents to repeatedly let the state know their child is still enrolled in a private school — up to 10 times a school year — to access scholarship funds their child already was approved to receive! This kind of red tape is counter to the intent of parental choice programs and counter to Florida’s long-held belief that our state prioritizes parents over bureaucrats.

Of course, the state should have reasonable safeguards to ensure students are not being double-counted — both for scholarship and public school funding — but these proposals go far beyond a simple fix to that challenge. Instead, policymakers are proposing to build in unnecessary and overly burdensome requirements that will fundamentally change how parents utilize these programs.

In Florida, families have the right to direct their children’s education. Bogged down with bureaucratic processes and paperwork, the state’s education choice programs will frustrate parents, create barriers for students and their families, and potentially lock others out of opportunities altogether.

As the Legislature looks to finalize a budget and related policy, they should reject these proposals to alter the state’s scholarship programs. Instead, legislators should convene with stakeholders this summer and fall to craft a reasonable path forward that keeps families front of mind.

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Nathan Hoffman is the Senior Legislative Director for the Foundation for Florida’s Future.