Sue Kingery Woltanski provides a cautionary tale from Florida about how the pursuit of universal school vouchers drains the taxpayers. Reposted with permission.
Universal vouchers are draining state revenue and driving up local property taxes
“HB1s fiscal analysis vastly underestimates the costs of this voucher expansion and if this isn’t corrected, public schools will bear the brunt of your budgeting error. We should learn from the experiences in both Arizona and New Hampshire where they underestimated the costs of their Universal ESAs. It is nonsensical to believe that half of the families currently paying to send their children to these private schools will NOT apply to get free money.
Of course they will.”
-Sue Woltanski, public comment on HB1, House PreK-12 Appropriations subcommittee, 2/23/23
SPOILER ALERT: We did not learn.
And now, while more and more state funding is diverted to voucher recipients, Florida is requiring school districts to raise local property taxes to fill the void.
When HB1 passed in 2023, ushering in Universal Vouchers in Florida, the Fiscal Analysis was a study in wishful thinking. It assumed only 50% of eligible private school families would apply, ignored the shift of homeschooled PEP students into the FEFP-funded Family Empowerment Scholarship, and failed to consider the long-term impact of expansion on future budgets.
In other words: “when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” And now Floridians are living with the consequences.
The HB1 Staff Analysis predicted just $112.1 million in new costs to serve 58,000 additional private school students.
In reality, the state now funds over 280,000 Family Empowerment Scholarships (FES)—including more than 250,000 students who never attended public schools. That’s 95% of the new voucher recipients, at a cost approaching $4 billion.
Since 2023, state funding for the FEFP has grown by $2.3 billion, but every dollar of that growth went to vouchers. District and charter schools received none of it.
The HB1 Staff Analysis also predicted NO fiscal impact on local governments. That, too, has proven to be absurd.
Contrary to the prediction that there would be no fiscal impact on local governments, the state has adjusted the funding formula – requiring Florida districts to rely more heavily on local property taxes. In 2022–23, local taxpayers covered 44.7% of the FEFP ($11.0 billion of $24.6 billion). Today, they cover 46.4% ($13.7 billion of $29.5 billion)—a state-mandated increase of more than $500 MILLION annually in property taxes.
While Governor DeSantis and CFO Blaise Ingoglia crisscross the state on their “Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight” (FAFO) tour, blaming local governments for rising property taxes, the reality is clear: vouchers aren’t just draining state general revenue—they are also driving up local property taxes.
The transition to universal vouchers in Florida’s HB 1 didn’t just drain state coffers—it shifted the burden onto local taxpayers. This was no accident. When leaders fail to plan responsibly, they plan for families and public schools to fail instead. The real question now is whether lawmakers will confront the mounting costs of unchecked voucher expansion—or continue ignoring its impact on taxpayers, communities and their local public schools.