Florida’s school choice headache: Millions of unused dollars
Politico | By Andrew Atterbury | January
The massive sum is one of several revelations recently unearthed by shocking state audits, issues lawmakers are attempting to rectify in 2026.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida’s aggressive expansion of school choice has left more than $400 million in taxpayer-funded education vouchers sitting unused, exposing major cracks in the state’s booming program.
Some 500,000 students across Florida, which hosts the nation’s largest school choice effort, have accepted education vouchers toward home or private schooling. But thousands of these students, for one reason or another, aren’t using the money — leaving a staggering $400 million lingering in their accounts.
This massive sum, clocking in at $100 million more than Florida spends annually on school safety, is one of several revelations recently unearthed by shocking state audits, issues lawmakers are attempting to rectify in 2026.
“We should be putting all of these mind-blowing graphics and numbers on a giant posterboard so that these billions of dollars can be DOGE’d, but we are not. Because under this taxpayer-funded school vouchers scheme, the funding did not follow the student, as we were told.”
School choice is exploding in Florida since the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature two years ago passed its “universal” policy allowing all students, regardless of income, to claim education vouchers averaging $8,000. While the program has proven to be extremely popular among parents and students, instantly opening the voucher flood gates spurred rapid growth that the state and scholarship-administering organizations have struggled to manage.
Millions of dollars are moving amid increasingly more incoming students choosing scholarships over traditional public schooling, resulting in serious financial turbulence for school districts. Simultaneously, there have been hang-ups in verifying where students are attending school, resulting in parents and private school operators alike receiving inaccurate and late funding amid the state’s attempts to keep track.
Florida reached a tipping point in October, when it was revealed the state’s 2024-25 education budget had a $47 million shortfall due to its Department of Education paying out funding for 23,000 vouchers to students with unclear enrollment status, either public or private. Soon after, a damning report from state auditors found an “absence of clear accountability” over Florida’s scholarship spending, which is poised to eclipse $4.3 billion next year.
In response, state lawmakers are attempting to pass reforms to the voucher system in 2026 and have already laid the groundwork for areas they intend to address.
One of those is tackling millions in unspent voucher dollars that have already been paid out to students.
Florida law dictates scholarship accounts for the state’s program serving students with special needs can’t exceed $50,000. Yet state auditors found 299 instances where students had unspent balances above that mark to an excess of $2.3 million.
But more pressing is the topline number of more than $400 million sitting in student accounts as of the end of last school year. Although most of these accounts fell short of hitting the state’s $50,000 threshold, auditors flagged the total as a “potentially excessive” amount and suggested the Legislature “revisit” the state’s balance limits.
Lawmakers, too, were shocked to discover how much state funding was in play.
“An extraordinarily large amount of money was held by the [scholarship-administering organizations] during a time when they really didn’t know where parents were choosing to have their children at school,” state Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Crestview), who is sponsoring school choice legislation, said during a December bill hearing. “It was a bad stewardship.”
A wide-ranging voucher fix proposed by Gaetz notably targets unspent voucher funds by shortening the window for deeming them inactive and trying to alert parents that the money is available.
Under the legislation, the state would be able to recoup funds from inactive accounts after one year, as opposed to two years in current law. This shift is predicted to have a “positive” impact on state revenue by speeding up the funding recovery process, according to a Senate analysis of the legislation.
At the same time, the bill would require scholarship administering organizations to notify parents about voucher balances when students reach 16 years old. It also ramps up accountability by calling on the Department of Education to keep track of how many accounts are closed and the amount of funding reverted to the state.
