Legislation enshrining the expansion of Florida’s newest educational choice program is set for a vote by the full House of Representatives, after getting a bipartisan nod today from the chamber’s education committee.
The bill would increase funding for Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts, make them available to more students, and broaden their potential uses. Last year, the state budget expanded the program, but those changes will expire this summer if they aren’t codified in permanent law. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the accounts.
Two parents, including Lydia Burton, whose four-year-old son was diagnosed with autism last year, told the House Education Committee about the impact the program has had on their children.
“When he was first diagnosed, as a mom, you go through all of these things that you don’t know if your child would ever do,” she said. She worried for a time she wondered whether her child would read or communicate. Now she’s considering the possibility he’ll go to college. “He really had that potential, and this program has unlocked that for him,” she said.
James Herzog of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said in the program’s second year, Catholic schools now serve 191 students who use the accounts.
He said he expects that number to rise in future years if the program’s expansion becomes permanent. Among other things, he said the changes would ensure parents could use the accounts to pay for services, like job coaches, which help students with special needs find meaningful work after they finish school and “bolster ties with businesses and schools in our local communities.”
Identical legislation in the Senate is also ready for a vote by the full chamber, and has also picked up bipartisan support.
“I think it’s good that we’re doing this,” said Rep. Joe Geller, D-Aventura, who added that he wanted to make sure lawmakers also supported special education programs in public schools and McKay scholarships that help nearly 30,000 students with special needs pay private-school tuition. “Let’s be sure that all of those options are receiving good consideration,” he said.
In a statement, Patricia Levesque, the executive director of the Foundation for Florida’s Future, said the bill’s progress bodes well for the state’s second-in-the-nation education savings account program.
“I am thankful for the strong support that signals expanding this important program to serve more students is a priority to lawmakers,” she said.
