school vouchers

Parents are weighing in on a plan to lift income caps from the state's school voucher program, enabling all families to become eligible for private school tuition stipends of funding for other education-related services.

A proposal in the Florida Legislature would dramatically increase the number of students who are eligible for school vouchers. It could come with a huge price tag.

Calling it a move toward “universal choice,” House Speaker Paul Renner on Thursday announced a proposal that would make every student in Florida eligible for school vouchers — a move that Democrats blasted as a Republican attack on public education.

Florida lawmakers created a voucher program three years ago called the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program. Since then, a new report finds the “flow of public funds to private education” has dramatically increased.

The League of Women Voters of Florida is out with a report casting the state’s largest tax credit scholarship agency as a "money management/marketing firm operating as a charity.” The League is also blasting a legislative effort to consolidate Florida’s multiple school choice programs.

Democratic efforts to slow a planned consolidation of the state's school choice programs failed Thursday. The proposal would merge the state's five school choice programs into two, and transform them into education savings accounts. The measure is a top priority for Republicans.

State Sen. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah Gardens, has been at the forefront of school choice issues in recent years. This time around he’s pitching a big one: a plan to consolidate the state’s five school choice programs into two. The measure also changes HOW those programs would be funded, and that’s where Democrats are drawing the line.

Florida lawmakers will deal with the pandemic’s impact on education when they reconvene in Tallahassee in March. Among the issues: a steep drop in student attendance, growing concerns about learning losses and a Republican effort to consolidate the state’s school choice programs.

Florida Republican legislative leaders are lauding a sweeping school-choice proposal, while Senate Democrats have vowed to “fight like hell” against it.

Florida democrats are pushing for changes in the state’s corporate tax scholarship program laws after an Orlando Sentinel investigation found some…