A Florida House panel this morning approved legislation that would create a new funding stream for private school choice scholarships.
The bill would allow businesses to contribute to scholarship funding organizations and in return receive a full credit for sales taxes they collect, in a manner similar to Enterprise Zone job credits. Those contributions would be made to state-approved scholarship funding organizations, including Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog.
The provisions would raise up to $150 million. The money would help fund Gardiner Scholarships, which provide education savings accounts to children with special needs, or tax credit scholarships, which help low-income and working-class students pay private school tuition.
Demand for both programs has outstripped supply. Step Up For Students received 181,000 applications for tax credit scholarships this school year, but the program only had funding available for around 105,000.
Meanwhile, the Gardiner Scholarship program exhausted all of its available funding for the first time this school year. There are now 1,300 students on Step Up For Students’ wait list for the program, and another 3,700 parents have expressed interest.
The program is funded through a line item in the state budget. Right now, both the House and Senate spending plans for next year would keep its funding at this year’s levels, with just over $100 million for scholarships, or more than $60 million below the projected need.
In a statement, Andy Gardiner, the former Senate President whose family is the program’s namesake, said parents would benefit from having a funding source for scholarships that was not subject to the vagaries of the annual appropriations process.
In just four years, the Gardiner Scholarship has become a powerful and successful educational tool for students with unique abilities, and a rare source of nearly universal bipartisan support in the Legislature. It deserves a stable funding source that can better match the money with the growing need. Combining the current appropriations with a tax credit scholarship is a creative approach to making sure that every student who needs this scholarship to fully realize his or her potential will be able to get it.
Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill added:
This funding mechanism allows us to manage growth in the Gardiner program more effectively and efficiently than a yearly appropriation. In years when all the funds are not used for Gardiner students, any leftover funds can be used to fund scholarships for qualified low-income students.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee opposed including the proposal in a broader tax bill. Reps. Joseph Abruzzo, D-Boynton Beach and Joseph Geller, D-Aventura described the educational choice provisions as a “poison pill.” They proposed amendments that would have stripped them from the legislation. They said they opposed tax credit scholarships and argued the money that supports the program could go to public schools instead.
“We vehemently disagree on how we get our students the best education possible in the state of Florida,” Abruzzo said.
Ways and Means Chairman Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, countered that the scholarships receive less funding per student than public schools, which means they save taxpayers money.
“These programs are critical to opportunity for Floridians,” he said, while successfully urging his colleagues to reject the Democrats’ amendments. Renner pointed to recent study results that show tax credit scholarship recipients are more likely to attend college than their peers who remain in public schools. “These children are more likely to succeed,” he said.
While they criticized tax credit scholarships, both Geller and Abruzzo hastened to note they support Gardiner Scholarships for children with special needs.
