Florida Legislature unites to change cap for family empowerment scholarship program

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Both chambers of the Florida Legislature approved a bill changing the cap for the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program for students with unique abilities.

Sen. Jay Collins, R-Tampa, and Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City, carried the legislation.

The bill passed in the House 111-0 and 39-0 in the Senate, being sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis for signature.

Collins said this program is “vital” to ensure that students with unique abilities “have the same opportunities for academic success as their peers.”

Established in 2021, the Family Empowerment Scholarship program offers families of students with disabilities the opportunity to request and receive from the state a scholarship to cover the cost of a variety of educational expenses.

“This bill will provide a mechanism to fund more students under the [Family Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities] increasing access and opportunity for success for our students with unique abilities,” Collins said.

The bill revises the maximum number of students participating in the scholarship program in the 2023-2024 school year to be the number of students that the approved scholarship funding organizations and the Department of Education determine eligible pursuant to the requirements.

The bill clarifies that beginning in the 2024-2025 school year, the maximum number of students participating in the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities program shall annually increase by 3 percent of the state’s total exceptional student education full-time equivalent student membership, not including gifted students.

Current law provides a formula to calculate the maximum number of Family Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities scholarships each year.

The calculated maximum number of scholarships for the 2023-2024 school year is 40,913 scholarships.

“As a parent of a unique abilities child, there are a cavalcade of different things that you deal with, and making sure that we provide those opportunities to those parents and those families is unequivocally and unquestionably the correct thing to do,” Collins said in closing.

Collins said they doing “the right thing” as a state to “fix this” and then revisit it, if needed, next year.