SB 48 School Choice / K-12 Scholarship Programs

Welcome to the FCCB Education Policy Team blog, “Education and the Common Good.”

One of the FCCB’s key legislative priorities for the 2021 Legislative Session is eliminating the prior-public-school attendance requirement in the Family Empowerment Scholarship and the McKay Scholarship while also continuing to promote educational pluralism and parental empowerment.

For the 2021 Legislative Session, Senator Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, has filed SB 48 which addresses both of these issues. The FCCB strongly supports this bill.

SB 48 Streamlines and Consolidates Florida’s K-12 Scholarship Programs
Currently, Florida has five different K-12 scholarship programs: 

• the McKay Scholarship; 
• the Gardiner Scholarship; 
• the Hope Scholarship; 
• the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship; and
•  the Family Empowerment Scholarship. 

The Gardiner Scholarship and the McKay Scholarship serve students with special needs and unique abilities. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Family Empowerment Scholarship serve students whose family household income falls below a certain threshold. The Hope Scholarship serves students who have been the victim of a bullying incident in a public school.

These scholarship programs place Florida on the cutting edge of the school choice movement and have empowered over 150,000 families to choose the best educational option for their child. However, each scholarship program has different eligibility requirements that potentially lead to different scholarship amounts. Oftentimes, it is a difficult process for families to determine which scholarship best suits their child. 

SB 48 tackles this issue by streamlining and consolidating the scholarships into two, easy to understand, programs. The McKay-Gardiner Scholarship Program will serve students with special needs and unique abilities, while the Family Empowerment Scholarship will serve low-income students and students who have been the victim of a bullying incident in a public school. If SB 48 becomes law, it will help thousands of Florida families to more easily navigate the K-12 scholarship process.

SB 48 Removes All Prior-Public-School Attendance Requirements
Under current law, a student is not eligible to receive a McKay Scholarship or a Family Empowerment Scholarship unless they were enrolled in a public school the year before. Florida Catholic Schools serve over 3,500 McKay Scholarship students and about 1,800 Family Empowerment Scholarship students. However, many Catholic school students are diagnosed with a disability or experience a household income drop after they have already spent several years enrolled at a Catholic school. 
SB 48 removes these prior-public-school attendance requirements and opens Florida’s K-12 Scholarship Programs to all students regardless of the school they attend.

SB 48 Empowers Parents to be the Primary Educators of their Children
Parents are the primary educators of their children. Therefore, the state should protect the right of all children to receive a great education by empowering families to educate their children as they see fit. 
In addition to increasing ease of access for both parents and students, this bill gives parents greater flexibility as to how they use scholarship funds to meet the particular needs of their students’ education. Both scholarship programs will be converted to education savings accounts (ESA), that will allow parents to use scholarship funds for a whole host of educational resources including virtual programs, tutoring, summer programs, and after-school programs.

Conclusion
SB 48 continues Florida’s strong tradition of promoting and advancing educational pluralism and parental empowerment. The FCCB strongly supports this bill.

Mike Barrett is the FCCB associate for education. Follow him on Twitter @fccb_education.
You can also read and follow this blog on substack.