Florida lawmakers shy from voucher spending controls after parents complain

Bill sponsor Sen. Corey Simon urged families to prevent “bad apples” from ruining the program.

Tampa Bay Times | By Jeffrey S. Solochek | March 7, 2024

A proposal to place tighter controls on how school voucher recipients spend the money fell off the rails in the waning days of Florida’s 2024 legislative session.

The plan, initially put forth by Polk County Republican Rep. Josie Tomkow, aimed to tackle reports that some families were using voucher funds to pay for “inappropriate” items largely unrelated to education, from Disney World passes to kayaks.

Tomkow wrote legislation that would limit the authorized expenses for instructional materials to things connected to the basics — language arts, math, science and social studies.

Homeschooling parents who receive vouchers pushed back, saying the pending change would limit their ability to provide arts and other enrichment opportunities to their children.

The Senate blinked first.

On Wednesday, senators voted unanimously to pull out Tomkow’s language. The move came just days after they defended the plan, citing the need for strong controls before abuse by “bad actors” became rampant. They said the state needed to balance family schooling choices with good fiscal stewardship.

But when the bill came up for discussion in committees, parents who homeschool their children and receive vouchers stepped up to oppose the measure.

Some lawmakers, including a few who opposed expanding vouchers in 2023, joined them. They contended that if families are allowed to get vouchers to fund their education choices, access to enrichment work should not be constrained to only those who can afford it.

By the time the bill, HB 1403, hit the Senate floor, that perspective won the day. The House followed suit on Thursday.

Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, said she supported the bill in its original form. But she opposed it after seeing the Senate amendment.

“What Chair Tomkow did was put in guardrails,” said Bartleman, a former Broward County teacher and school board member. “What the Senate did was gut those guardrails. This is a big deal.”

Tomkow said she had reservations, too. But she contended that other aspects of the bill made up for the deletion.

The bill requires the organizations that manage and fund the vouchers — Step Up For Students and AAA Scholarship Foundation — to annually develop purchasing guidelines that include prohibited items and things that need preapproval. If they do not comply, they face a $10,000 fine.

The Department of Education is charged with overseeing the process.

“I think we have landed in a great spot,” Tomkow said.

That did not mean, however, that the concerns about using the money for possibly non-educational items had dissipated. Tomkow said she would keep an eye out for fraud and abuse moving forward, and will move for changes again if needed.

Senate sponsor Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, made similar remarks.

Simon stressed that while “parents know best how to educate their children,” they need to remain vigilant that they do the right thing with the state funds. He noted that many of them hear about inappropriate activities in their many social media chat groups.

“Those of you that are doing it right, don’t allow those few bad apples to ruin what we have here,” Simon said. “When you see the bad actors, it’s paramount that you notify” the Department of Education.

The public release of Step Up for Students’ 2023 guidelines stirred questions about the authorized uses. It included items such as 55-inch televisions and paddleboards, things that some parents complained should take a back seat to more educational needs.

The bill also implements new timelines for when Step Up for Students and AAA make payments on approved expenses. That’s a direct response to the complaints lawmakers and others received about long-delayed payments in the fall that threatened the viability of many private schools that served voucher recipients.

Despite some concerns, the Senate unanimously adopted the bill as amended.

“As a homeschooling family, I say thank you for balancing it out,” Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, told Simon during debate.

The House voted 89-18 for the measure, after earlier supporting the original version 109-1.

Rep. Mike Beltran, R-Riverview, was the lone holdout in the first vote. He backed the bill because of the change, saying it balanced the need to have fiscal controls with making the program practical for families.

Florida Policy Institute senior policy analyst Norín Dollard, who has questioned the cost of the state’s voucher expansion, argued the controls that lawmakers removed seemed necessary.

“Policymakers are the stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Dollard said, “and so this eleventh-hour change to HB 1403 and the state’s failure to ensure appropriate guardrails for voucher purchases is particularly alarming.”

(Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 7, 2024, after the House approved Senate amendments to the bill.)