Florida Legislature approves $4.5 billion for homeschoolers and private schools

The Florida Legislature approved a budget on May 29 that includes about $4.5 billion in school voucher funding without adopting recommended accountability reforms. Florida Auditor General Sherrill Norman had issued a report last November faulting the state’s school voucher program for “a myriad of accountability challenges that left a Statewide funding shortfall and a system where funding did not follow the child.”

The $114.5 billion General Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2026 contains about $30 billion for K-12 education, according to a News Service of Florida report. It was negotiated by leaders of the Republican majorities in the Florida Senate and House of Representatives and approved in a special session held more than two months after the regular session adjourned in March. 

School vouchers are taxpayer funds placed in individual educational savings accounts that can be used by parents to pay for private school tuition or other expenses they deem education-related, ranging from internet service to Walt Disney World tickets. The money is deducted from the state education funds that would otherwise go to the child’s local public school.

Florida’s move toward school vouchers is nothing new, according to Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a union that represents about 125,000 education employees across the state. 

“I was just recently in one of our locals in Hillsborough County, and they had a collection of all of their newsletters over the years, dating back to the 1950s, and in the early 1970s there was an actual article talking about how public school dollars should not go to private schools,” Spar said in a phone interview. “In the modern age, if you will, a lot of this dates back to Gov. Jeb Bush, when he started talking about the idea of so-called school choice and allowing for taxpayer money to be used to provide vouchers for students to attend private schools. And it’s really blown up over the last few years when Florida went to what is known as a universal school choice program.”

In 2023, lawmakers enacted a law that expanded the state’s education voucher program to allow any student to receive Family Empowerment Scholarship funds to pay private or homeschooling expenses, regardless of family income or whether the student previously attended a public school. In the 2024-2025 school year, the first year of implementation, Florida spent $3.9 billion of taxpayer money on vouchers, according to the Education Law Center.

Unlike private schools, local public school systems are required by federal law to provide a free appropriate education to every enrolled student, regardless of disabilities. Without the money that is going to vouchers, public schools have been forced to meet their legal obligations with fewer resources to do so.

“With this universal voucher program, over 70% of the dollars are estimated to have gone to students who already attended private schools and have never been in the public school system,” Spar said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing this significant drain on public schools, where they’re now having to make very difficult decisions about cutting programs, closing schools, increasing class size, and reducing some of the services they may provide to students and families.”

Critics say Florida’s voucher system lacks accountability requirements and safeguards. Lee County public school teacher Christina Chuderski told the Florida Independent that the November 2025 audit revealed a voucher system that is rife with problems. 

“You can have a student who attends a private school, on a voucher; they are not attending public school in October when we do our accounts for full-time enrollment, referred to as FTE,” Chuderski said. “And then in December, that student, that parent, decides, Oh, I’m going to put them back in public schools. Well, that money is not following the student back to the public school; it’s staying with the private school or home school, and that creates a real burden, because now we’re educating that child without the funds to do so.”

The audit found that the Florida Department of Education has been unable to fully account for $270 million of taxpayer money from the program.

“That’s a major problem, especially when you’re looking at districts like mine, where $75 million of the money that came into Lee County Public Schools last year went right back out the door to private and charter schools directly tied to vouchers. That’s a big concern,” said Chuderski. “We have a $2 billion operating budget, but right now we’re facing a $92 million shortfall, and if you look at $75 million going out the door for vouchers, that’s a huge chunk of it.”

The Florida Senate unanimously approved a bill in January to add oversight requirements recommended by the auditor, including setting up a tracking system for students and separate funds for public school money and voucher money. The bill did not come up for a vote in the Florida House. A spokesperson for Republican Senate President Ben Albritton told the Florida Independent in an email: “SB 318 passed the Senate, but did not pass the House of Representatives. President [Don] Gaetz and Senator [Corey] Simon plan to work on the bill again next session.”

“To all of us who believe in parental choice and education as I do, the Auditor General’s report was tough medicine,” said Republican state Sen. Don Gaetz, the bill’s sponsor, according to the news site Florida Politics. “To disregard the Auditor General’s findings and warnings and recommendations and just let things roll on as they are, would be legislative malpractice.”

House leaders then successfully kept the reform provisions out of the budget agreement, USA Today Network Florida reported on May 29. “We just could not get to an agreement this session that seemed to satisfy everybody’s wishes,” said Republican Senate Budget Committee Chair Ed Hooper of Clearwater.

The offices of Republican House Speaker Daniel Perez, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Wyman Duggan, and House Budget Committee Chair Lawrence McClure did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

In an implementation bill, the Legislature did include language requiring the Department of Education to begin the process of creating a “statewide data interoperability platform for use in the administration of the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program” to ensure that voucher recipients are actually enrolled in the private schools they claim to be attending. 

Spar said the changes are insufficient. “It’s such a small part of what the auditor general was recommending in his, I believe, nine recommendations for the Legislature to act on. I would say they didn’t act on even one full recommendation. … At the end of the day, again, you’re talking about taxpayer money that’s originally designated for public schools going out the door with still little to no accountability or transparency back to taxpayers to ensure that that money is being used to actually support the education of students in the state of Florida.”

“When taxpayers can’t track $270 million and public schools are shortchanged by a $398 million shortfall, the responsible move is basic oversight, not burying the money in the formula and walking away,” Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani told the Florida Independent in an email. “A unanimous, bipartisan Senate said this program needs guardrails. The House said no. That’s not a win for parents or for kids in public or private schools; it’s a win for avoiding scrutiny of how billions in public dollars are spent.”

The overall budget bill passed 99-6 in the House and 35-0 in the Senate on May 29. It now goes to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who can reject line items. “I’m going to sign the budget here in the next month, after I do vetoes, that will spend less the next fiscal year than we’re currently spending this fiscal year,” he told reporters, according to a Fox 13 report.