Florida House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee Chair Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka announced significant progress in resolving major fiscal issues that plagued the state’s scholarship programs during the 2024-2025 school year, including a $47 million shortfall to school districts and thousands of frozen student scholarship accounts.
- Background: Last month, Inweekly reported on the accounting nightmare that the school voucher has become. Read “Florida’s $4.3 Billion Nightmare.”
Two Major Fiscal Challenges Identified
Chair Persons-Mulicka outlined the scope of the problems that emerged last fiscal year: “We ended fiscal year 24-25 with two major fiscal issues, one being a $47 million shortfall to school districts and the second being around 22,000 frozen scholarship accounts for students who had also shown up on public school attendance records.”
- The issues were severe enough that “the department had to come to us, the legislature, the appropriators, to help resolve those issues because there were no funds left in the FVFP for fiscal year 24-25,” the Chair explained.
Resolution Plan for Frozen Scholarship Accounts
After months of work beginning in mid-February, the Department of Education and scholarship funding organizations Step Up For Students and AAA Scholarship Foundation reached an agreement. Chair Persons-Mulicka emphasized a key change in the resolution process: “It was decided that each entity was exclusively responsible for its own funding file. The legislature has not endorsed the funding files as accurate or complete, but we relied on those entities to make that determination.”
- On October 29th, $16.9 million was released to the scholarship organizations to resolve the frozen accounts. “This represents the total amount calculated by either Step Up AAA or the department for the 3,680 scholarship students that they determined were owed funds for fiscal year 24-25,” Persons-Mulicka stated.
The Chair provided an update on disbursements to families: “As of today, Step Up has released $14.5 million to 3,095 of the 3,638 scholarship students. In addition, it’s my understanding that AAA has released $131,187 to 27 students.”
For affected families, Chair Persons-Mulicka urged: “For those families and for those schools who accept scholarship funds, who are listening to our committee today, who had either their accounts frozen or had students who had accounts frozen, I encourage you all to check your scholarship accounts as of today.”
School Districts to Receive $47.1 Million
To address the shortfall to school districts, Budget Amendment B0354 for $47.1 million was approved. The Chair noted that “the department sent a memo to all superintendents this morning informing them that during the week of November 10th, the department will be releasing the $47.1 million to the appropriate school districts.”
- Looking ahead, Chair Persons-Mulicka expressed optimism while acknowledging the need for systemic improvements: “It’s my sincere hope that through the work of this subcommittee, together we can explore ways to improve the implementation and administration of our state scholarship programs to ensure that what happened in fiscal year 24-25 is not repeated.”
The subcommittee also discussed the 2nd Quarter Scholarship payments and improving the Reimbursement Process. I will post more about the meeting on Monday.