PBC kids attending private schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers doubled this year. Why?

There has not been a big exodus of kids from public schools after the state’s expansion of the voucher program. A majority of Palm Beach County students using vouchers already attended private school.

The Palm Beach Post | By Katherine Kokal | February 12, 2024

Although Florida’s school voucher program is supposed to increase educational options for public school students whose families can’t afford private school, data from the first year of the program in Palm Beach County show that nearly 80% of students who used the vouchers were already attending private schools — effectively subsidizing their private education with taxpayer dollars.

At least one education researcher and a private school leader say that’s exactly the point.

“(It’s) the least surprising thing that has happened in education policy in a long time,” said Douglas Harris, an economist and professor at Tulane University who studies school choice. “It’s like creating an incentive when someone buys a new, expensive car. Who is all that money going to go to? People who were already buying expensive cars.”

Meanwhile, one private school official relishes what he calls the transition from funding school systems to funding individual students. Palm Beach Christian Academies Superintendent John Anthony Boggess says his schools, which are on the campuses of Baptist-affiliated Family Churches, encourage every parent to apply for the voucher.

“We say, ‘You have this available, you need to utilize it. It’s your tax dollars. Apply it to your tuition payment schedule for our school,'” he said.

Voucher use doubled in Palm Beach County in 2023

Florida has allowed select students to use taxpayer dollars to attend private schools since 1999, when Gov. Jeb Bush first signed the voucher program into law. Until last year, voucher applications were limited to groups such as families earning a low income or students with disabilities.

But in July, a law championed by Republicans in the Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis created a near-universal voucher program with no income limits.

“There will be a preference for low- and middle-income families, but at the end of the day, we fundamentally believe that the money should follow the student. It should be directed based on what the parent thinks is the most appropriate education program for their child,” DeSantis said of the program.

If the student using the voucher previously attended a public school, the money follows them out of the school’s budget. If the student was already enrolled in private school, the voucher is effectively a new cost for the state.

And Palm Beach County’s data show no mass exodus from public schools now that their families have state help affording private school. In fact, a vast majority of students new to the voucher program already attended private school.

Data from Step Up for Students show that just 10% of students using vouchers this year came from Palm Beach County’s public schools. About 78.5% of the students were enrolled in private schools last year, the data show.

“They were already going to write a check, so now they’re going to write a smaller check,” Harris said of private school tuition paid in part by vouchers.

In its first year, the number of Palm Beach County students using vouchers to attend private school has more than doubled, according to data from Step Up For Students, one of the two organizations that manage the scholarships.

During the 2022-23 school year, just under 4,000 students used the educational options voucher. This school year, that number soared to 10,838 kids.

Voucher results in Florida mirror other states with expanded vouchers

Palm Beach County’s rate of existing private school students using vouchers mirrors initial reports from other states such as Iowa and Arizona that have expanded vouchers in recent years.

Roughly two in three students using Iowa’s education spending accounts had previously attended a private school, The Des Moines Register reported. About 21% of students using the vouchers started kindergarten this year, and more than 12% previously attended a public school, the newspaper reported.

In Arizona, researchers also found that vouchers were also primarily being used by students already attending private schools and that nearly half were being used by families in the wealthiest ZIP codes. The program is approaching a cost to taxpayers of $1 billion, or 1,400% of the original projected cost.

Despite disagreement on the price tag, Florida’s program is expected to cost between $2 billion and $4 billion in the first year.

Private school leaders encourage families to use vouchers to help cut tuition

Of Palm Beach County’s 163 private schools, 121 accept the newly expanded voucher for educational options, according to a database maintained by the Florida Department of Education.

Leading three of those schools is Boggess, who worked as public school Superintendent Mike Burke’s chief of staff until last spring, when he left to take the new job in private education.

Boggess said that nearly 90% of students at the schools he oversees use the voucher program and that school employees heavily encourage all families to apply so the school can build the family’s payment plan around the voucher.

With tuition set around $10,000 per year at the Lake Park school and $13,000 per year at the West Palm Beach campus, the voucher takes care of between 60% and 80% of tuition for most families.

“I’m not building a system based on this, but I am taking advantage of this,” Boggess said. “(School) choice isn’t new to the state of Florida … The challenging portion is there aren’t enough private schools out there.”

Boggess said his school system is counting on a huge influx of students in the next five years. Palm Beach Christian Academy has plans to add 16 campuses to the three it has now in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. All of those campuses will be created within Family Church buildings or built on church property. Construction is to be funded by donations from parishioners, Boggess said.

Harris said it’s likely to be several years before the school district sees the full impact of the voucher program. The expansion has incentivized the building of new private schools, which he said underscores the long-term goal of the program.

“I’m less interested in what happens in the short term because the intent of the policy is to bring a much bigger change to public education,” Harris said. “To shift more families out of public schools and into private schools — that’s the goal.”

Boggess said his schools aim to reinstate the home/church/school model of influencing a child’s life, where the lessons taught at church on Sunday are echoed throughout the school week and reinforced at home by parents or guardians. Vouchers make it possible for more people, he said.

“I think this is a reshape of the funding model altogether. We aren’t funding systems of schools anymore; we’re funding individual students,” Boggess said. “It’s upholding the parental right so that they can choose the best option for that child.”