Florida Tax Credit Scholarships need more funds to give students greater school options | Opinion

Since it began in 2002, the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarship has successfully provided lower-income students with greater access to additional public and private school options, growing from about 15,000 students in its first year to more than 107,000 today. This academic year, almost 22,500 Miami-Dade County students are using FTC scholarships to attend a school that better meets their needs.

Unfortunately, the demand for FTC scholarships is outpacing supply. Currently, there are more than 35,500 students who are eligible for FTC scholarships, but who do not have a scholarship because of insufficient funds. To help address this extraordinary demand, the Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis created the Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES) this year. This helped, but this new scholarship program reached its capacity of 18,000 students within three months of becoming law.

Florida needs to serve more kids. Two Miami-Dade families illustrate why.

Antonio Pollock didn’t want to send his son, Antonio Jr., to his zoned public school. It was in a rough neighborhood, and he feared the kindergartner wouldn’t receive the individual attention he thought his son needed.

Antonio Jr. already was enrolled in New Jerusalem Christian Academy in the state’s VPK program, which is free. It made sense for him stay at the school for kindergarten, but that would require tuition that Pollock couldn’t afford.

“When I told him he might have to leave school, he was crushed,” Pollock said, “so that’s when I had to look into the scholarship program.”

Pollock feared that his application for the scholarship was too late in the process for his son to be eligible. But Pollock says he was “ecstatic” when he received a scholarship award letter that made it possible for Antonio Jr. to stay in his preferred school.

At New Jerusalem, Antonio Jr. can indulge his love for singing, acting and dancing. His father says when his son sees his clothes laid out for school each day he gets super excited.

Kadine Smith wasn’t as fortunate getting a scholarship. She and her son Aiden, 13, moved to Miami from New York in 2018. She struggled to find the right school for him. They tried a charter school that was recommended, but it was an hour away from their home and a poor cultural fit for Aiden.

“It was a good school, just not for him,” Smith said.

Aiden then went to live with his father, who was in closer proximity to a different charter school. These changes caused Aiden to become withdrawn and extremely stressed. Smith moved Aiden back with her and found a private school, Holy Cross Lutheran, that was near her home and provided a better environment.

Smith and her son, now an eighth-grader, are happy at Holy Cross. It’s a small community school with a curriculum with which Aiden is familiar. Smith likes the principal and says the teachers are very good.

However, financial barriers remain. The school told Smith about the FTC, but by the time her application was approved there were no scholarship funds available for Aiden. In order to come up with the tuition funds to keep her son in school, Smith had to sell her car. She now takes the bus or walks to get where she’s going.

Smith shrugs off the inconvenience.

“It’s not really a sacrifice. It’s an investment,” she said. “It’s important for Aiden to get a good education.”

Nevertheless, Smith desperately wants a scholarship so she can keep Aiden in a school that works best for him. Plus, she says, she might even be able to begin saving up to buy another car.

To ensure families like Smith’s have the same education options as Antonio Pollock’s, the Florida Legislature should allow the FES program to serve more students. No child’s future should be put on hold.

Doug Tuthill is president of Step Up For Students.