Florida private school voucher program expansion: What is required to receive assistance?

Introduced to the Florida House floor as HB 1 earlier in the month, the new school voucher expansion law was a top priority for Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature.

This week, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law, marking a major change to the state’s school voucher program, which will give nearly all Florida students the option to use state funds to cover at least some of the tuition costs for a private school of their choosing.

Statewide, 1.3 million students attend private schools, charter schools or home school, DeSantis said as he signed the law Monday in Miami.

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The new legislation removes income-eligibility requirements that are part of current voucher programs.

How can students and their families apply for the vouchers, and what schools can they apply to? Here is what we know about the new law:

How much assistance do vouchers offer?

Once the law takes effect on July 1, students and their families can receive roughly $8,500 in assistance.

Only students attending private school are eligible to receive vouchers.

Students whose household incomes are less than 185% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $51,000 for a family of four, would get first priority, with the priority scale ranging up to four-member families with a $111,000 income. 

It is unclear how much the program's expansion will cost the state.

What is required to be eligible for vouchers

The new legislation sets some conditions for parents to receive the voucher assistance for their child. These include, but are not limited to:

• Select the private school and apply for the admission of his or her student.
• Request the scholarship by a date established by the school.
• Inform the applicable school district when the parent withdraws his or her student from a public school to attend an eligible private school.
• Require his or her student participating in the program to remain in attendance throughout the school year unless excused by the school for illness or other good cause.
• Meet with the private school's principal or the principal's designee to review the school's academic programs and policies, specialized services, code of student conduct, and attendance policies before enrollment.

The Step Up for Students and the AAA Scholarship Foundation are the two organizations that manage the state’s scholarship programs.

What about student and school eligibility?

Florida students who are eligible to enroll in K-12 grades can receive the voucher, according to the law.

Students who are “enrolled in a public school, including, but not limited to, the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, the College-Preparatory Boarding Academy,” some developmental research schools and charter schools are not eligible.

The law requires that private schools participating in the state scholarship program meet several requirements in order to be an eligible school, including showing fiscal soundness and hiring experienced teachers, among others.

'Personalized education programs' or homeschooling

Families who provide homeschooling will also be eligible to receive the voucher assistance, provided their children meet the state's attendance and learning requirements, in the form of an educational savings account to be used for future education costs.

The new law will limit the number of vouchers issued for homeschooled children to 20,000 for the 2023-24 school year. That number may increase by 40,000 each subsequent year until it is "repealed" by July 2027.