The Florida Department of Education is developing a rule to govern distribution of Family Empowerment Scholarship payments to families, the agency noticed Friday.
If requested by the public, the department would hold a meeting on Aug. 22 “to set limits on when eligible scholarship students can receive all four quarterly scholarship payments in a year.”
Text for the proposed rule was not available Friday.
“The limits will be dependent on when the department receives a request for funding from a scholarship funding organization. In addition, other amendments to improve the scholarship will be considered,” the public notice states.
Dialogue but no decision
Lawmakers considered but didn’t pass a major package, SB 7030, this session to address school choice scholarships, including how and when payments should be distributed to schools and families.
In the early days of the 105-day session, school administrators voiced concerns that state money meant to follow students to their schools of choice was at times getting lost, and the state was losing track of where students were enrolled.
At the time of the bill’s presentation, sponsor Sen. Don Gaetz said that at any given time the state cannot locate 23,000 students.
Hendry County Superintendent Mike Swindle told a legislative committee that if the state maintained a universal system to track students’ locations at any snapshot in time, that would “cut out a lot of the forecasting, cut out a lot of voodoo math, if you will, that really creates quite a conundrum for all of us.”
Polk County Superintendent Frederick Heid during the same meeting said, citing a district analysis, that 750 students claiming a school choice scholarship were also taking at least one class at Polk County public schools, resulting in $1.3 million, or 30 teachers’ salaries worth, of funding that is not reaching the school.
“Fluctuation in funding can affect the continuity of our programs and services offered to students,” Heid said.
–Jay Waagmeester, Florida Phoenix
