The Gut Punch
Florida’s Auditor General delivered a devastating assessment of the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, and State Senator Don Gaetz isn’t sugarcoating the findings.
- “The first words out of the Auditor General’s mouth when he met with several of us before the public meeting were, ‘everything that could go wrong with this program has gone wrong,’” Gaetz shared in a recent podcast interview. “Those were his initial words, and that was a gut punch.”
The problems with Florida’s $4 billion voucher program run deep. Gaetz, a longtime school choice supporter, hoped simple fixes would suffice. But the Auditor General’s months-long review revealed something far worse: structural collapse.
“The fact is that the Auditor General has pointed out that there are structural problems with the program,” Gaetz said. “There needs to be some structural change as well as changes to the way that the program has been implemented and managed by the department and by the fiscal agents.”
The Scale of the Problem
Florida can’t locate tens of thousands of students enrolled in the voucher program.
- “Last year we couldn’t find 23,000 students on any given day. This year we can’t find 30,000 students on any given day,” Gaetz explained. “And one of the reasons is we don’t have a numbering system. We don’t give students student ID numbers when they’re in a voucher program.”
The lack of basic student tracking has created a financial nightmare. Public schools have been shorted millions of dollars when students they’re educating show up in their classrooms, but voucher funds have already been distributed to families who initially planned to homeschool.
- “Dollars went into the family to cover homeschooling costs, but then the child showed up at the public school. So the public school had to undertake the costs of education. And then the public school may not have gotten paid,” Gaetz said.
Meanwhile, private schools are fighting the state just to collect payment for students they’ve educated.
Following the Money
The financial mismanagement extends to how the state pays Step Up for Children, the primary fiscal agent for the program.
Senator Jason Pizzo highlighted a particularly troubling detail: “The Department of Education was paying well over a hundred million dollars to Step Up for Children in advance of knowing where the students would be and whether or not they would even use scholarships,” Gaetz said, noting the advance payment totaled $179 million.
“The state was paying money and then trying to chase the money to find out where it was used and for what purpose and to whose benefit,” Gaetz explained. “So it was a pay and chase model that the auditor general criticized, because it’s terrible accounting. I mean, you wouldn’t run a one horse stable with pay and chase.”
Step Up for Children receives 3% of all scholarship money—a “handsome fee” from a $4 billion program, as Gaetz noted.
The Legislative Fix
Gaetz has introduced bipartisan legislation to address these structural problems, with support from Senate President Ben Albritton. The bill would separate voucher funding from public school financing, establish student ID numbers, and reduce administrative fees.
- “We have to pay the scholarship program separately. We have to pay school districts what they’re supposed to get when they’re supposed to get it,” Gaetz said. “And then we have to account for the money.”
He acknowledges the political reality: “It’ll be a very difficult bill to pass.” But for Gaetz, the stakes are too high to remain silent.
- “I didn’t ask to go back to the Florida Senate to write Mother’s Day resolutions,” he said. “We cannot sit idly by. It’s $4 billion plus of taxpayer money.”