Hundreds of thousands of Florida families have used state vouchers to help pay for tuition at private schools or homeschooling since the state lifted income and enrollment restrictions in 2023.
There have also been rule changes that allowed charter schools to move into underused public school district buildings. And traditional Florida public schools have been seeing dwindling enrollment and budget constraints, leading to teacher cuts.
Recently, the Florida Education Association, along with parents, school board members and civil rights organizations, sued the state Department of Education. They say a disparity between traditional public schools and private schools getting taxpayer vouchers violates the state constitution, according to the News Service of Florida.
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The news organization reported how the lawsuit claims almost $5 billion of taxpayer money is sent to private schools and charter schools from the Family Empowerment Scholarship, which aren't held to the same oversight as traditional schools.
Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said the lawsuit was a last resort.
"We cannot wait for another year. We cannot wait for other elected officials. Our students cannot lose one more day of education," he said.
Spar also said they're asking for "accountability, transparency, and a basic set of educational standards."
Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said the vouchers are about ensuring kids get the best education possible.
"We're gonna continue to support families and ensure that they can utilize those opportunities so that their child is getting the best education for their success," he said. "We will stand unapologetically convicted on that principle."
On "The Florida Roundup," reporter Andrew Atterbury with Politico gave more context on the lawsuit, some differences in regulations and requirements between traditional public schools compared to other school choice and more.
The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.
Let's talk about this lawsuit filed three years after the voucher program was expanded to universal vouchers. Why now for the suit?
I think for a lot of people it would have made sense perhaps if this would have been filed a couple of years ago when the universal school choice happened.
But then again, now there are more effects that you could perhaps document and use to make your case, which I'm sure the FEA [Florida Education Association] is going to do in this.
But it is interesting because this is the first time the vouchers have really been challenged since they went universal. I think of the way that former Gov. Jeb Bush — he's a big voucher guy — he's one of the people who got this off the ground. He's the one who had to deal with the original lawsuit about this years ago.
He said basically this is the FEA's attempt to revive the 2006 ruling that overturned the state's first-ever voucher, which eventually spawned other vouchers where we are now.
So now maybe perhaps since we've had three years for schools to show this is affecting them, maybe the FEA thinks this is the time to go before a judge and see what they think.
How much are we talking about her in 2026 ... how much state education funding is being earmarked for these vouchers?
It's a big chunk. So the budget they're looking at now, we're talking up to $4.5 billion for vouchers and the current year is $4.2 billion.
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Those are just for the scholarships from the state money that go towards students to go to a private school or even sometimes homeschooling.
That's one thing that a lot of people kind of overlook that there's vouchers now for homeschooling, and those are very popular. I think those are even more popular than lawmakers thought they ever would be.
We were doing a live show at our member station in Orlando, Central Florida Public Media. And we had the Orange County superintendent on. We were asking her about the drop in school enrollment in traditional public schools. And she cited, first and foremost, homeschooling over private schools.
Especially that's the one thing you hear a lot about in some of these more rural counties because there aren't private schools as in many cases, but parents are still saying, "Hey, I can get a voucher to teach my kid at home what I want to teach him." And the vouchers are $8,000 or so.
For some people, they were turned off by having more state regulation over homeschooling, which is the whole point of homeschooling is not to have state regulations, but I think that voucher was very attractive to people. And it makes education obtainable in a way that it probably wasn't before.
The lawsuit is about the money, but it's really I think, kind of citing fair rules and regulations between the traditional public schools and private schools and homeschooling. Am I right?
You're right. To that point, the lawsuit has a very interesting chart. It basically breaks down all sorts of different rules and how they're applied differently to charter schools and scholarships.
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For instance, every school has to have a school safety officer and armed guard. That's required in charter schools. It's required in traditional public schools, but now in the scholarship program.
That's one of several ways that they've broken out, looks like 20, 30 different rules and how they apply differently, which is exactly like you said. That's their total point in this lawsuit.
What about the idea of certified teachers and the regulations around requirements of a certified teacher in traditional public schools versus what charter schools may can.
What the FEA alleges in their lawsuit for public schools — public traditional schools — you know, charter schools are public schools.
So they are required. Teachers must have a Florida educator certificate. Now, for charter schools, they must hire certified teachers, but they can also hire those who are eligible for — or working toward — their certification.
And now, in private schools, they're not required to have a certified Florida teacher certification.
Is there a portion of its [the FEA] claim about the public tax dollars moving away from a public institution into private hands?
Yeah, so what they're asking for in the lawsuit is they basically want the Family Empowerment Scholarship, which is the main voucher program and even the charter school law to be found unconstitutional.
We're talking like that's 900,000 students that would affect. That really shows why this is such a big deal. That also shows why you're going to have the governor react strongly to this, you had the education commissioner react very strongly to this, the attorney general, former Gov. Jeb Bush.
So when you make this kind of challenge in this state, you're going against basically everyone who is in power. I mean, Florida calls it the school choice state, where we have more school choice students than anybody. So yeah, when you file a lawsuit like this, you're really going right at them.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Tom Hudson for "The Florida Roundup."
