Sarasota School District provides an example of a wave hitting al across the country. Federal COVID funds have dried up, and Florida’s privatization efforts are starting to have a major effect on funding. Alice Herman reports for Suncoast Searchlight.
The plunge in federal support comes as the state spends less money on public school districts — instead sending more to private schools through vouchers.
The legislature determines funding for public schools using a calculus that takes into consideration factors like local property tax revenue, costs of living and the costs of different educational programs.
Florida’s per-pupil “base student allocation” increased by an average of 1.4% during the last two decades, according to Sarasota County Schools.
But adjusted for rising inflation, that allocation has actually fallen, Florida Policy Institute found in a 2025 analysis. In today’s dollars, the 2007 base student allocation of $6,100 exceeded funding for the current school year by nearly $800 per student.
In Sarasota County, every penny of state funding from the Florida Education Finance Program was diverted into vouchers for private schools this year, with the lion’s share of money flowing into the district coming from local property taxes, according to Department of Education budget documents.
After the state passed a law in 2023 removing income limits from the voucher programs, called the Family Empowerment Scholarship, billions of dollars have been redirected from public schools across the state — with families who already had children in private schools accounting for a majority of the new vouchers.
In Sarasota County, 4,800 students used a voucher this year. More than 60% of those students were already homeschooled or enrolled in private schools.
Nearly $45 million in public funding was redirected from Sarasota County Schools and into the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, according to the district’s current budget.
“This is how you bankrupt school districts,” said Holly Bullard, a Sarasota County public school parent who is also the chief strategy officer for Florida Policy Institute, pointing to rural districts that bring in less revenue from property taxes. Even wealthier counties like Sarasota “are not protected from things like layoffs or even future school closures if this continues completely unabated.”