MIRAMAR, Fla. – Florida’s explosion in à la carte learning has created space for all kinds of new, state-supported educational experiences, including, improbably, a class in building with power tools that’s tucked inside an ashram, a kind of spiritual retreat, with a grove of mango trees and a colony of especially plump iguanas.
The class is run by Builder’s Workshop, an à la carte provider founded by Marvin and Christine Hernandez. The couple retrofitted an old horse stable on the property into a student workshop, humming with saws, drills, and sanders.
Now, just a few months in, they’re already serving 30 students a week, all in middle and high school. Nearly all of them use education savings accounts (ESAs), the flexible state scholarships that are fueling Florida’s fast-growing universe of à la carte learning.
“They say build it and they will come, and people are coming,” Christine said. “Families are hungry for it.”
The same could be said for à la carte learning in Florida.
Enabled by ESAs, à la carte learning is when families use state support to customize their child’s education completely outside of full-time schools, by picking and choosing from multiple providers. This school year, 140,000 students will do à la carte learning in Florida, up from about 8,000 five years ago, and their families will spend more than $1 billion in ESA funds. As we detail in a new data brief, nothing on this scale is happening anywhere else in America.
As the number of à la carte learners expands, so does the supply of places they can go.
Last year, 4,318 providers received ESA funding in Florida, more than double the year prior. Many of them are tutors and therapists. But a growing number are like Builder’s Workshop, specialized, micro-programs that would have been inconceivable as public education just a few years ago.
Inside Builder’s Workshop, students learn how to operate tools safely and confidently. They build birdhouses, step stools, shoe racks, and in one class I visited, “shields of faith.” Along the way, they pick up habits that rarely come from screens.
“Teaching kids to use tools and build things … builds confidence, responsibility, and real-world skills,” Marvin said. “It teaches them problem-solving, patience, and how to work safely. It also strengthens their math and creativity, gets them off screens, and helps them feel capable of making and fixing things.”
“Plus, from a Christian view,” Marvin continued, “it reflects God’s design for us to create and steward the world around us.”
(Builder’s Workshops offers both secular and Christian classes.)
Some Builder’s Workshop students are members of a Montessori co-op that also uses the property. Some are not. In the rapidly evolving world of à la carte learning, lines blur, and kids, families, and educators cross them freely.
“I just love building stuff,” said student Jasmin Hernandez (no relation to Marvin and Christine), a 16-year-old who wants to be a carpenter. Jasmin spoke briefly between noisy cuts with a band saw.
That DIY attitude is what Builders Workshop wants to cultivate.
“We want them to know they can fix a table if they need to fix a table,” Christine said. But “we also want them to know they can create their own products if they want to.”
Marvin and Christine are fixtures in South Florida’s fine arts scene. Marvin is a longtime artist; Christine has a background in project management. Among other services, their company designs and builds custom display cases, pedestals, and other structures for museums, galleries, and private homes.
So, they know their power tools. They also understand the broader potential.
To date, the expansion of ESAs hasn’t done much to enhance career and technical education. But student interest is growing for those skills and jobs, even as some quarters worry about a lack of qualified teachers. Florida, though, is full of highly trained professionals — builders, craftspeople, men and women skilled in the trades — who could be part of the solution.
Maybe ESAs are the bridge that connects them.
Maybe Builder’s Workshop is a glimpse of what that could look like.
Jasmin’s mom, Michelle Hernandez, said her daughter is already close to graduating because she took so many dual enrollment classes through her prior school. So, Michelle decided to homeschool Jasmin and let her explore more nontraditional classes.
Builder’s Workshop, she said, is “an outlet to be creative but with items that have a purpose. Building things also means not having to wait for others to do it, and she can see her own ideas come to life.”
Jasmin’s 13-year-old brother, Cristian, is also enrolled. Michelle said he looks forward to it because hands-on learning registers more deeply with him. Plus, she said, “He’s a boy. He needs to move.”
Kelly Jacobo said likewise about her son, Malakai, who’s also 13 and taking the class.
Jacobo said her grandfather and great-grandfather were accomplished carpenters, so Builder’s Workshop was perfect. “It kind of runs in the family,” she said. “I’ve been praying for forever that there’d be a woodworking class for kids.”
The backdrop for Builder’s Workshop couldn’t be more colorful. Even though it’s in super urbanized South Florida, it’s hidden down a graded road lined with banana trees. Around the corner is the mango grove, where the iguanas, clearly living their best lives, feast when the fruit is in season.
Alas, this setting is going to fade from the story. The owner recently sold the land, so Marvin and Christine will be looking for new digs soon. They don’t anticipate a problem with demand, however, and the families they serve are devoted.
“We don’t know where or when it will happen,” she said of finding a new place, but “we have an immense amount of faith that more families will join once we open our doors.”
By David Heroux and Ron Matus
In the blink of an eye, à la carte learning in Florida has become one of the fastest-growing education choice options in America.
This school year, 140,000 Florida students will participate in à la carte learning via state-supported education savings accounts, up from 8,465 five years ago. Their parents will spend more than $1 billion in ESA funds.
These families are at the forefront of epic change in public education. Completely outside of full-time schools, they’re assembling their own educational programming, mixing and matching from an ever-expanding menu of providers.
Nothing on this scale is happening anywhere else in America.
To give policymakers, philanthropists, and choice advocates a snapshot, we produced this new data brief. In broad strokes, it shows a more diverse and dynamic system where true customization is within reach for any family who wants it.
ESAs shift what’s possible from school choice to education choice. They give more families access not only to private schools, but tutors, therapists, curriculum, and other goods and services.
Adoption of these more flexible choice scholarships has been booming nationwide; 18 states now have them. But nowhere is their full potential more fully on display than in Florida.
Last year, 4,318 à la carte providers in Florida received ESA funding, more than double the year prior. Many of them are tutors and therapists, but a growing number offer more specialized and innovative services, as we highlighted in our first report on à la carte learning. Former public school teachers are also a driving force in creating them, just as they’ve been with microschools.
How far and fast à la carte learning will grow remains to be seen. For now, check out our brief to get a glimpse of what’s ahead.
MIRAMAR, Fla. — William Ivins moved his family to South Florida ahead of his retirement from the United States Marine Corps and enrolled his children at Mother of Our Redeemer Catholic School, hoping they would reap the same rewards as he did from a faith-based education.
But, as William and his wife, Claudia, would soon learn, that was easier said than done.
A lawyer for much of his 20-year career in the Marines, William needed to pass the Florida Bar Exam before he could enter the private sector. It was a long process that left him unemployed for 19 months.
“It was a struggle,” he said. “My retirement income was not enough to pay for the cost of living and tuition for my children.”
The Ivins' faced a few choices: continue with the financial struggle, homeschool their children, send them to their district school, or move out of state. None were appealing to the Ivins, and fortunately, they didn’t have to act on any.
Florida's education choice scholarships managed by Step Up For Students allow his four children to attend Mother of Our Redeemer, a private K-8 Catholic school near the family’s Miramar home.
“It was a perfect storm of having to retire from the Marines and not really having a job lined up,” William said. “The transition was more difficult than I thought it would be. The income just was not available for us to continue our kids’ education in the way we wanted. Had the scholarship not been there, we would have been forced to move out of state or homeschool them or move them to (their district) school.”
In July 2020, the Ivins moved to South Florida from Jacksonville, N.C., where William had been stationed at Camp Lejeune. William contacted Denise Torres, the registrar and ESE coordinator at Mother of Redeemer, before making the move. She told William the school would hold spaces for his children. She later told him about the education choice scholarships managed by Step Up For Students.
“That was a big relief for him,” Torres said.
At his mother’s urging, William began attending Catholic school in high school.
“That was a life-changer for me,” he said.
He converted to Catholicism and vowed if he ever had children, he would send them to Catholic school for the religious and academic benefits.
Rebekah graduated in May from Mother of Our Redeemer. She had been an honor roll student since she stepped on campus three years ago.
“Rebekah likes to be challenged in school, and she was challenged here,” Claudia said.
Rebekah, who received the High Achieving Student Award in April 2022 at Step Up’s annual Rising Stars Awards event, is in the excelsior honors program as a sophomore at Archbishop McCarthy High School.
“She's an amazing, amazing student,” Torres said. “It’s incredible the way she takes care of her brothers. She's very nurturing. Every single teacher has something positive to say about her.”
Rebekah’s brothers, Joseph (seventh grade) and Lucas (fourth grade), do well academically and are active in Mother of Redeemer’s sports scene, running cross-country and track. Nicholas, the youngest of the Ivins children, is in second grade. He was allowed to run with the cross-country team while in kindergarten, which helped build his confidence.
William had been in the Marines for 20 years, eight months. He served as a Judge Advocate and was deployed to Kuwait in 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom, to Japan in 2004, and then to Afghanistan in 2012 for Operation Enduring Freedom.
He retired in May 2021 but didn’t find employment until December 2022. The Florida Bar Exam is considered one of the more challenging bar exams in the United States. He took the exam in July 2021 and didn’t learn he passed until September. It took William more than a year before he landed a position with a small law firm in Pembrook Pines.
Claudia, who has a background in finance, works in that department at Mother of Our Redeemer Catholic Church, located next to the school.
“They have really become part of our community,” Principal Ana Casariego said. “The parents are very involved and are big supporters of our school and church.”
In Mother of Our Redeemer Catholic School and Church, Willian and Claudia found the educational and faith setting they wanted for their children.
“It is a small community environment where you know all the teachers and staff by first name,” William said. “My kids have received a wonderful education in an environment where they don’t have to worry about bullying, and they can really strive to grow and do their best academically.
“The scholarship kept us in the state and kept our kids in the school system that we wanted them to be in. It’s been a great blessing to us.”
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Four years ago, Phil and Cathy Watson were distressed and desperate. Their daughter Mikayla, then 12, was born with a rare genetic condition that led to physical and cognitive delays. With her school situation getting worse by the day, they needed options, now.
The Watsons were open to private schools. But they couldn’t find a single one near their home in metro D.C. that met Mikayla’s needs. They even looked in neighboring states. Nothing.
One day, though, Phil varied his keyword search slightly, and something new popped up:
A school for students with special needs that had low student-to-staff ratios, transition programs to help students live independently, even an equine therapy program.
The Watsons feared it was too good to be true. Even if it wasn’t, it was 700 miles away.
A destination for education
Florida has always been a magnet for transplants. It’s tough to beat sunshine, low taxes, and hundreds of miles of beach. But as Florida has cemented its reputation as the national leader in school choice, the ability to have exactly the school you want for your kids is making Florida a destination, too.
In South Florida, Jewish families are flocking from states like New York to a Jewish schools sector that has nearly doubled in 15 years. But they’re not alone. Families of students with special needs are making a beeline for specialized schools, too. The one the Watsons stumbled on has 24 students whose families moved from other states – about 10% of total enrollment.
The common denominator is the most diverse and dynamic private school sector in America, energized by 500,000 students using education choice scholarships.
According to the most recent federal data, the number of private schools in Maryland shrank by 7% between 2011-12 and 2021-22. In Florida, it grew by 40%.
“What Florida is offering is just mind blowing compared to Maryland,” Phil said. “If a story like this ran on the national news, people would be beating the door down.”
‘The kid who never spoke’
Phil and Cathy Watson have six children, all adopted. They range in age from 1 to 39. All have special challenges.
“God picked out the six kids we have,” said Cathy, who, like Phil, is the child of a pastor. “We feel very strongly that we were called to do what we do. Our heart says we have love to give and knowledge to share. These kids need that, so it’s a match.”
Mikayla is their fourth child. She was born with hereditary spastic paraplegia, a condition that causes progressive damage to the nervous system.
She didn’t begin walking until she was 18 months old. Even then, her gait continued to be heavy-footed, and she was prone to falling. Her speech was also, in Phil’s description, “mushy,” and until she was 12, she didn’t talk much.
In many ways, Mikayla is a typical teen. She loves steak and sushi and Fuego Takis. Her favorite books are “The Baby-Sitters Club” series, and her favorite movies include “Beauty and the Beast” and “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.” Many of her former classmates, though, probably had no idea.
In school, Mikayla was “the kid who never spoke.”
Checking a box
As Mikayla got older, she and her parents grew increasingly frustrated with what was happening in the classroom. “She was being pushed aside,” Phil said.
Teachers would tell her to read in a corner. Between the physical pain from her condition and the emotional turmoil of being isolated, she was crushed. Sometimes, Phil said, she’d come home and “unleash this fury on my wife and I.”
The pandemic made things worse. In sixth grade, Mikayla was online with 65 other students. Then, three days before the start of seventh grade, the district said it no longer had the resources to support her with extra staff. Instead, she could be mainstreamed without the supports; enroll in a private school; or do a “hospital homebound” program.
The Watsons chose the latter. Three days a week, a district employee sat with Mikayla, going over worksheets that Phil said were “way over her head.”
“All it was,” he said, “was checking a box.”
Just in the nick of time, the school search turned up a hit.
Florida, the land of sunshine and learning options
What surfaced was the North Florida School of Special Education.
“From just the pictures, I’m thinking, ‘This looks legit,’ “ Phil said. “Both of us are like, ‘Wow.’ “
When the Watsons called NFSSE, as it’s called for short, an administrator answered every question in detail. This was not the experience they had with some of the other private schools they called.
At the time, Phil owned a home building company, and Cathy worked for a counseling ministry. They lived comfortably. But they were also paying tuition for another daughter in college.
Thankfully, the administrator told them Florida had school choice scholarships. For students with special needs, they provided $10,000 or more a year.
The Watsons couldn’t believe it. They were familiar with the concept of school choice but didn’t know the details. Maryland does not have a comparable program.
The administrator also told them NFSSE had a wait list. But the Watsons had heard enough.
A fortuitous phone call
A few weeks later, they were touring the school.
The facilities were stellar. Even better, the administrator leading their tour knew the name of every student they passed in the hallways. “We were blown away,” Phil said. “They truly care. “
At some point, the staff ushered Mikayla into a classroom. As her parents watched from behind one-way glass, another student greeted Mikayla with a flower made of LEGO bricks.
For years, Mikayla had been withdrawn around other students. Not here. The shift was immediate. She and the other students were using tablets to play an interactive academic game, and “you could see her turn and laugh with the kids next to her,” Phil said.
Minutes later, he and Cathy were in the administrator’s office, “bawling our eyes out.”
“We said, ‘We’re all in. We have to be here. We’ll be here next week if that’s what we have to do.’”
Days later, the Watsons were at Disney World when NFSSE called. Unexpectedly, the family of a longtime student was moving. The school had an opening.
New friends, improved skills and boosted confidence
Even without the choice scholarship, the Watsons would have moved. At the same time, the scholarship was invaluable. The cost was not sustainable in the long run, Phil said, especially because he had to re-start his business.
The Watsons rented a long-term Airbnb and then an apartment before buying a house in Jacksonville. They uprooted themselves completely from Maryland, including selling their dream home.
“That was hard,” Cathy said. “You’re leaving everything you love.”
Mikayla’s turnaround, though, has made it all worthwhile.
Mikayla was reading at a first-grade level when she arrived at NFSSE; now she’s at a seventh-grade level. She loves the new graphic design class. She won an award for completing 1,000 math problems. “When she got here, she couldn’t add two plus two,” Phil said.
Her verbal skills have blossomed. She eventually told her parents something she didn’t have the ability to tell them before: In her prior school, she didn’t talk because other students laughed at her.
At NFSSE, the “kid who never spoke” speaks quite a bit.
One day, she served as “teacher for the day” in her personal economics class, delivering a lesson on how to make change.
Mikayla is kind and quick to smile. She is surrounded by friends and admirers. “Mikayla is my best friend,” said a chatty girl with pigtails who waited by her side in the hallway.
One boy held the door for Mikayla as she headed to her next class. A second hung her backpack on the back of her wheelchair. A third walked her to P.E.
Mikayla’s confidence is growing outside of school, too.
In the past, she wouldn’t say hi or order in a restaurant. But at Walmart the other day, Phil needed a card for a friend’s retirement, so Mikayla went to find a clerk. She came back and told him, “Aisle 9.”
Mikayla has a bank account and a debit card. She tracks the money she earns from chores. She routinely uses the notes app on her phone to mitigate challenges with short-term memory.
NFSSE, Cathy said, is constantly reinforcing skills and strategies to foster independence. It “pushes for potential,” just like the families do.
Mikayla “sees that potential now; she’s excited now,” she said.
Before NFSSE, the Watsons didn’t think Mikayla could live independently. Now they do.
The school and the scholarship, Phil said, have “given Mikayla an opportunity for her life that we didn’t know existed.”
He credited the state of Florida, too, for creating an education system where more schools like NFSSE can thrive.
If only every state did that.
TAVERNIER, Fla. – Every year, millions of students across America learn the foundational concept of place value in math. But it’s a safe bet few of them learn it at the beach.
At the first microschool in the Florida Keys, that’s exactly what a handful of kindergartners and first graders were doing with their teacher last week. Standing in the shade of buttonwoods on the edge of the Atlantic, they used mahogany seed pods, mangrove propagules, and sea grape leaves to help their brains grasp the idea.
In Florida, this is public education.
The students all use state-supported school choice scholarships to attend Coastal Glades Microschool, a new elementary school founded by former public school teachers Samantha Simpson and Jennifer Lavoie. Both 13-year educators, Simpson and Lavoie wanted a school that reflected their preferred approach to teaching and learning, as well as the goals and values of the families they sought to serve.
The result: Coastal Glades is Montessori-based, immersed in the outdoors, and deeply tied to the local community.
It’s also totally theirs to run as they see fit.
“We’re free. We own it. We don’t have anyone telling us what to do,” Lavoie said. “That’s priceless.”
Florida is leading the country in education freedom, with more than 500,000 students now using choice scholarships. Coastal Glades is another distinctive example of what that freedom looks like.
Microschools are popping up by the hundreds. Former public school teachers are the vanguard in creating them. All the new learning options are stunning, not just in volume but in diversity. In Florida, at least 150 Montessori schools participate in the choice scholarship programs, and at last count, at least 40 “nature schools” serve Florida families, too.
This movement is self-propelled. It’s driven by parents, teachers, and communities who are realizing more every day that public education is in the middle of a sea change. Now, they get to decide what “a good education” looks like.
For the past six years, Simpson and Lavoie worked together at the same school. As choice options exploded around them, freedom kept tapping them on the shoulder.
“We said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pick up these four walls and move? And it just be us?’” Lavoie said.
To get their bearings, Simpson called a friend, another former public school teacher who founded a microschool. This one happened to be 90 miles north in Broward County, the unofficial microschool capital of America. The friend gave her good advice. She also said starting her own school was “the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Learning at Coastal Glades is proudly “place based.” The colorful communities that populate the islands between the Everglades and the sea are an endless source of exploration and inspiration. Simpson and Lavoie want their students to know and love where they live, so they can grow up to be good citizens and thoughtful stewards.
“Being in the community, being in nature, that’s where you’re going to learn,” Simpson said.
The students learned about bees from a local guy who harvests mangrove honey. They visited a berry farm on the mainland. Even more exotic trips are on tap: To Everglades National Park. To the Keys’ sea turtle hospital. Even to a reef where the students will be able to snorkel near nurse sharks. “We want them to learn that some scary things are not really scary,” Simpson said.
Nearly every day, the students visit natural areas for play-based learning. After the math lesson beneath the buttonwoods, for example, they went hunting for hermit crabs and jellyfish.
“This is just as important as testing, as reading, as anything,” Simpson said. “We want to bring back childhood and the love of learning.”
That’s exactly why Alejandra Reyes enrolled her 5-year-old daughter, Daniella. Daniella’s curiosity is blossoming, Reyes said, because she’s in a small school with more individualized attention and more hands-on learning.
“I didn’t want her to be in class sitting down all day. She’s such a free-spirited little girl,” said Reyes, a stay-at-home mom whose husband is a marine mechanic. “She’s learning so much on her little adventures. It’s, ‘What’s this? What’s that? Let’s look it up.’ “
“We got so lucky that my daughter’s first experience with school is this microschool.”
Simpson and Lavoie like the state of Florida’s academic standards. They use them to guide instruction. But they’re not tethered to pacing guides, and they can switch gears or directions whenever it makes sense. They do that often with their one older student, a fifth grader who was bored in his prior school because he wasn’t being challenged.
At the beach the other day, the older student got to learn about mass, volume, density, and buoyancy while his younger classmates were doing the lesson on place value.
Simpson set out two buckets, one filled with freshwater, one filled with saltwater. The student built a mini boat out of aluminum foil to float on the surface of each, then carefully piled pennies into it to see which boat in which bucket could sustain the most weight. (The one in saltwater won.)
“He loves engineering and problem solving,” Simpson said. And the school has the flexibility to accommodate him with more advanced lessons.
As it becomes even more mainstream, school choice in Florida is experiencing some growing pains. Coastal Glades represents some of those challenges, too.
For classroom space, the school rents a 250-square-foot room in a church. The church meets fire codes for dozens of parishioners, but not for a handful of students. Coastal Glades isn’t the only unconventional learning option to learn about fire codes the hard way – see here, here, and here – but its predicament takes the cake.
In lieu of installing an expensive sprinkler system, which Simpson and Lavoie could not afford, the pair hired a local firefighter, at $37 an hour, to hang out while students were in the building. Since the additional requirements only kick in when there are more than five students, Coastal Glades was able to drop the firefighter as long as it capped enrollment.
Next year, the school will be in another building that shouldn’t have those issues, which means it will be able to serve more families.
Word’s already out on the “coconut telegraph” – that’s Keys-speak for grapevine – that the new school will be growing.
Reyes has no doubt that other parents will respond the same way she did.
“Times have changed. Schools are different,” she said. “What kid doesn’t want to be learning outdoors?”
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The diagnosis was Entamoeba histolytica, which is an infection caused by ingesting an amoeba that produces fatigue, abdominal pain, weight loss, and a few more symptoms you don’t want to have when you are more than 9,000 miles from home.
That’s where Christopher Trinidad happened to be during a visit to his parents’ homeland in the Philippines the summer before the eighth grade.
Born and raised in Jacksonville, Christopher’s immune system was not accustomed to some of the pathogens found in the local food. He had not built up a resistance like residents have. Lying in a hospital bed in the city of Bacolod, while the antibiotics did their thing, Christopher had this thought: “This has to be my science fair project.”
And so it was.
After returning home, Christopher ordered microorganisms online. “Safer organisms,” he said, than the one that waylaid him a few weeks earlier. He experimented with various items found in the kitchen pantry – ginger and garlic – mixed them with water and other ingredients and developed a solution that killed the organisms.
“What if,” Christopher thought, “we use these solutions on the actual thing? This can help so many people.”
His project finished first at a regional science fair.
“Impressive, right? Wait until you hear what he did his freshman year,” said Carla Chin, director of marketing and communications at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville.
Christopher, a sophomore, attends the parochial Catholic school on a Florida education choice scholarship managed by Step Up For Students.
He sat in a chair inside Chin’s office. His father, Greg, sat in another and proudly listened as his son, with a mixture of pride and modesty, described the project that earned first place at a regional science fair and then a bronze medal at the Genius Olympiad and a $15,000 scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology at a global competition held in Rochester, New York.
Using an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and violin music, Christopher was able to predict the moods and emotions of stroke victims who are unable to speak, thus creating a line of communication with doctors.
“By using brain waves, doctors can know what their patients are feeling, which would lead to better decision-making,” he said.
Michael Broach is the Vice Principal at Bishop Kenny and the Director of Mission Integration, as well as the AP Capstone Department chair. He was responsible for approving Christopher’s science project.
“That was one of the most sophisticated projects, I think, that I've seen in my years of being here,” Broach said. “And just the way his mind works is well above his peers. Well above what you would expect of somebody of his age.”
Christopher is 15.
He wants to be a neurosurgeon.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the brain since I was little,” Christopher said. “It controls everything in our body. It’s really interesting, and going into surgery, fixing people's brains is really complex, and that's what I love about it.”
His parents – Greg and Shiela – are both nurses, so Christopher was raised around medical science. Their house is filled with textbooks related to their careers. Christopher has read them all.
The valedictorian of his middle school, Christopher has a 4.3 weighted GPA at Bishop Kenny. He chose to attend the Catholic high school because it aligns with his faith and has a high academic standard.
“It challenges me,” he said. “I know there are other people here I can talk to, and it gives me a greater experience.”
He’s not the only student at Bishop Kenny who knows what an electroencephalogram is and how it works.
While he spends a considerable amount of time working on his science fair projects (keep reading to learn about what his plans are for this year’s project), he’s very active at school. Christopher is a member of the Science Club, Medical Career Club, St. Vincent de Paul Society, campus ministry, and the Brain Brawl. He plays the piano at the monthly mass. He’s also first violin for the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Listening to his son talk, Greg had one feeling. “Blessed,” he said. “He has a humble heart. We try to remind him always what’s hard.”
Greg understands hard.
Raised in a small town an hour’s plane ride from Manila, Greg’s childhood was humble at best. He went through elementary school with only two pairs of shoes. He caught rides to school on trucks headed to the sugarcane fields on days when his mom couldn’t afford bus fare.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to join the Boy Scouts,” Greg said. “My mom didn’t have the money.”
Greg understood the power of an education and where it could lead him. He became a teacher until, at age 26, he immigrated to the United States in search of the American Dream.
He worked odd jobs and became a certified nursing assistant. From there, he attended nursing school in St. Augustine. He now works as a traveling nurse in the cardiac catheterization labs in hospitals around North Florida. He became a traveling nurse for the pay because he and Sheila support three family members in the Philippines.
That’s why Christopher traveled to the Philippines the summer before eighth grade, to see where his parents’ stories began.
“I wanted him to see and feel the difference of being here in this world compared to a third-world country,” Greg said.
The lesson wasn’t lost on his son.
“I just feel really lucky that I'm here in America and I have more opportunities than some kids have in the Philippines, and I’m not going to let this go to waste,” Christopher said.
Greg said he is grateful for the Florida education choice scholarship that helps pay Christopher’s tuition at Kenny.
“In the Philippines,” he said, “if you don’t have money, you don’t go to school.
“He has this opportunity of having this scholarship, and I'm telling him, you're way more blessed than what other people have in other states. We're so thankful that all these opportunities are coming for our son.”
Christopher’s next opportunity is this year’s science fair, where he will take last year’s project a step further.
“I'm planning to build a rehabilitative exoskeleton so it can help people with movement disabilities,” he said. “I can also use an EEG in that, so they can think about what they're going to do with their exoskeleton, which basically helps them move. It would correlate to their actual thoughts. So, if they wanted to walk, they would be able to think it, then the exoskeleton would help them walk.”
TAMPA, Fla. — Amelia Ramos recalls her oldest child’s first school experience after moving to the Grant Park neighborhood in 2018.
“It was not a good fit,” she said. “She lasted about four months.”
In addition to academics, Ramos cited safety as a big concern.
“You couldn’t even ride a bicycle down the street,” she said.
Ramos found hope after learning about Grant Park Christian Academy, a private school affiliated with the Faith Action Ministry Alliance. The nonprofit organization’s stated mission is “to strengthen neighborhoods through meaningful engagement, collaboration, and strategic partnerships.”
Grant Park Christian Academy prides itself on its record of providing strong academics and spiritually based character development. Ramos learned from the school’s principal about a state education choice K-12 scholarship program administered by Step Up For Students that would help cover the tuition.
With that, Ramos was sold.
Her daughter thrived at Grant Park and now attends a district high school. Her son and twin daughters now attend the private school, which serves 70 students in grades K-8.
“We love the school and the staff,” she said, adding that she appreciates the assurance of knowing that her children are safe when she leaves them at Grant Park Christian Academy.
“If only they had a high school,” she said.
Although there are no plans to add a high school, an expansion will soon more than double the school's capacity, located inside a gated property owned by a non-denominational church.
The project is just one example of a broader statewide trend resulting from the Florida Legislature’s passage of HB 1 in 2023. The landmark legislation made all K-12 students eligible for education choice scholarships regardless of their household income and gave families more flexibility in how they spend their students’ funds.
Putting parents in the driver’s seat supercharged the demand for more learning options.
In the 2023-24 school year, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1, Florida saw the largest single-year expansion of education choice scholarships in U.S. history. That growth continued in 2024-25. Recent figures from the Florida Department of Education show that more than 500,000 Florida students were using some type of education savings account.
The expansions at Grant Park Christian Academy and other schools across the state, such as Jupiter Christian School in Palm Beach County, couldn’t come at a better time. The latest figures from Step Up For Students show that the number of approved private schools has surpassed 2,500. That figure doesn’t include a la carte options, including those now being offered by public schools. State figures show 41,000 parents received scholarships in 2024-25 but never used them. According to a survey by Step Up For Students, a third of the 2,739 parents who responded said there were no available seats at the schools they wanted.
The Rev. Alfred Johnson, who founded the ministry alliance and Grant Park Christian Academy in 2014, said the school is just one of the ways the ministry works to support and improve the neighborhood. A look outside the window once a month will show teams of alliance volunteers in neon yellow vests cleaning up roadside trash. Johnson estimates that over the past three years, the group has cleared 70 tons of garbage, including old mattresses, furniture, and household appliances.
Johnson and his volunteers regularly knock on doors and survey residents and business owners about community needs. They also host events; the annual Fall Fest offers families a safe and fun alternative to Halloween trick-or-treating.
“I know what they do to really make a change in this community,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Donna Cameron Cepeda, a Republican who represents District 5 and the county at large. She said she had known Johnson for years before she ran for office. “You can see the lives, how they have been changed because of the environment they are able to be in now.”
She was among a group of 50 community members at a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new 2,660-square-foot modular building that will open after crews add the finishing touches.
Those attending the event represented a broad swath of community leaders, from local law enforcement officers to staffers at the Temple Terrace Uptown Chamber of Commerce, who brought the ceremonial oversized scissors. A representative of the Hillsborough County Clerk’s Office also attended. So did a group of leaders and students from Cristo Rey Tampa Salesian High School, which has some Grant Park Christian Academy alums.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Gwen Myers, a Democrat whose district includes Grant Park, joined her Republican colleague in praising the alliance and the school. The two commissioners also presented Johnson with a commendation honoring his contributions to the community.
“Our children are our future leaders, and when we can give them the basic foundation of education, they are going somewhere,” Myers said. “Just remember where they got their start, right here in Grant Park. What you’re doing is being a true public servant. Thank you for your vision.”
A husband, father of six, and grandfather of 12, Johnson refers to the students at Grant Park as “our babies” and describes the school as a haven of safety and peace.
“We hardly ever have any fights here,” he said. The school day starts at 7:30 a.m. After-school care is available until 5 p.m. Grant Park also offers summer camp, tutoring, mentoring and career preparation programs for the community, where the median household income stands at $32,216, and 72% of households make less than $50,000 per year. About 20% of the population did not graduate from high school. Although the area still has crime, Johnson said it has decreased over the past five years. Educational opportunities such as Grant Park Christian Academy and adult education and training play a role in improving the area’s quality of life, he said.
Johnson said he has seen many students turn their lives around. He told guests about a boy who was put outside the room for disrupting class on his first day.
“I don’t like this school,” he snarled.
“Give us a chance,” Johnson replied. He encouraged the boy to focus on his studies and respect his teachers. “You’re going to be a great leader and a great man.”
By the second year, the boy’s attitude completely changed. Test results that year showed he had the highest reading score in the school.
“That’s just one of the stories,” he said. “We have a plethora of them.”
Caleb Prewitt continued to shatter the perception of what someone with Down syndrome can’t do when he conquered the 26.2-mile course at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Oct. 12.
Caleb, 18, became the youngest person with Down syndrome to earn an Abbott Star for running one of the original six World Major Marathons.
The Jacksonville native, who receives a Florida education choice scholarship for students with unique abilities managed by Step Up For Students, is also recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest person with II2 (Intellectual Impairment, including those with Down syndrome) to run a half-marathon (13.1 miles). He did that when he was 16.
David, Caleb, and Karen pose near the finish line of the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Photo courtesy of the Prewitt family
Since 2020, when he began running as a means of getting exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic, Caleb has completed 47 triathlons (swim, bike, run), five half-marathons, and now one full marathon.
(Read about Caleb’s story here.)
The marathon was his most daunting endeavor, requiring months of training. The race took its toll – he experienced leg cramps after 20 miles. Undeterred, he pressed on and continued to cheer those who lined the course and were cheering for him.
“That went on for miles and miles, and I couldn't stop him,” Karen said. “I wanted to save his energy, and he just wanted to do it. I said, ‘You know what? This is his race. He can do what he wants.’”
Those in the Florida running community who have come to know Caleb during the last five years, and the faculty and staff at the North Florida School of Special Education, which he has attended since he was 5 with the help of his scholarship, wouldn’t have expected anything less.
He is known around school as “Mr. Mayor” for his always sunny disposition, and he is a star on social media with more than 31,000 followers on Facebook and more than 45,000 on Instagram to his Caleb’s Crew pages.
Running the marathon for the National Down Syndrome Society, Caleb raised more than $2,000 for the charity. There were 40 teammates from the National Down Syndrome Society team cheering him on at various points along the course.
Caleb’s dad, David, greeted him at the finish line with a long hug and a kiss.
“So proud of you,” David told his son.
Caleb was one of 17 charity runners in the event, which meant he was featured around Chicago in ads for the marathon, and his story appeared on the race’s website.
The 17 and their families met at a reception the day before the race.
“Their stories were all great. You know, everybody's story is great,” Karen said. “It's just that I think ours is great, too.”
That prerace publicity and the fact that he and Karen wore blue shirts with “Caleb’s Crew” on the front made him stand out somewhat in the field of 54,000 competitors.
“The crowd was amazing,” Karen said. “The whole way there was support and people cheering for Caleb. Everywhere we went, they knew his name, so that was a thrill.
“It was an awesome experience. What a wonderful day.”
Jordan Glen School started in 1974 on 20 acres of woods in the small town of Archer near Gainesville. Owner Jeff Davis, a former public school teacher, moved to Florida from Michigan to start a school that allowed students more freedom. Today it continues to thrive, thanks in part to education choice scholarships. Photo by Ron Matus
ARCHER, Fla. – Archer is a crossroads community of 1,100 people 15 minutes from the college town of Gainesville, but far enough away to have its own quirky identity. It’s surrounded by live oak-studded ranch land but calling it a “farm town” doesn’t ring right. When railroads ruled the Earth, Archer was a whistle stop on the first line connecting the Atlantic to the Gulf. In the late 1800s, T. Gilbert Pearson, co-founder of the National Audubon Society, roamed the woods here as a kid, skipping school to hunt for bird eggs. A century later, rock ‘n roll icon Bo Diddley spent his golden years on the outskirts.
So, let’s just say Archer is a neat little town. And maybe it’s fitting that for half a century, it has been home to a neat little private school that doesn’t fit into any boxes, either.
Jordan Glen School got its start in 1974, when former public school teacher Jeff Davis moved down from Michigan. In the late 1960s, Davis became disillusioned with teaching in traditional schools. In his view, students were respected too little and labeled too much.
“Back in the day, I would have been labeled ADHD. I hated school,” he said. “I never met a teacher that took a personal interest in me.”
As a teacher, he saw a system that was “too constricting.”
“There was just a general distrust of children, like they were going to do something bad,” he said. Education “doesn’t have to be rammed down your throat.”
Davis migrated to what was, more or less, a “free school,” with 50 students on a farm near Detroit. Today we’d call it a microschool.
In the 1960s, hundreds of these DIY schools emerged across America, propelled by an upbeat vision of education freedom inspired by the counterculture. Davis said the Upland Hills Farm School was a free school, more or less, because while its teachers were “long-haired” and “hippie-ish,” the school had more structure and rigor than free school stereotypes would suggest.
Davis thought the Gainesville area would be a good place to start a similar school. It had a critical mass of like-minded folks. So, in 1973, he and his family bought 20 acres of woods off a dirt road in Archer. Not long afterward, they invited a little school called Lotus Land School, then operating out of a community center in Gainesville, to move to their patch in the country. Today we’d call Lotus Land a microschool, too.
It was also, more or less, a free school. Davis described the teachers and families as “love children” and “free spirits,” but in many ways, their approach to teaching and learning was mainstream. A decade later, he changed the name. “I thought people would think it was a hippie dippy school, and I knew it was more than that,” he said.
Lotus Land became Jordan Glen. The school was named after the River Jordan, after some parents and teachers suggested it, and after basketball legend Michael Jordan, because Davis was a fan.
Fast forward a few more decades, and Jordan Glen School is thriving more than ever.
It now serves more than 100 students in grades PreK-8, some of whom are the second generation to attend. Nearly all use Florida’s education choice scholarships. Actor Joaquin Phoenix is among Jordan Glen’s alums. So is CNN reporter and anchor Sara Sidner.
Jordan Glen is yet more proof that education freedom offers something for everyone and that its roots are deep and diverse. Ultimately, the expansion of learning options gives more people from all walks of life more opportunity to educate their children in line with their visions and values.
“There is something about joy and happiness that makes people uneasy and a bit insecure,” Davis wrote in a 2005 column for the local newspaper, entitled “Joyful Learning is the Most Valuable Kind.” “If children are enjoying school so much, they must not be doing enough ‘work’ there.”
“Children at our school,” he wrote, “love life.”
A peacock, one of two dozen that roam the Jordan Glen School campus, watches students at play. Photo by Ron Matus
The Jordan Glen campus includes a handful of modest buildings. It’s still graced by a dirt road and towering trees. It’s also home to two dozen, free-roaming peacocks. They’re the descendants of a pair Davis bought in 1975 because they were beautiful and would eat a lot of bugs.
Given that backdrop, it’s not surprising that many families describe Jordan Glen as “magical.”
Alexis Hamlin-Vogler prefers “whimsical.” She and her husband decided to enroll their children, Atticus, 14, and Ellie, 8, in the wake of the pandemic.
“They’re definitely outside a lot,” she said of the students. “They’re climbing trees. They’re picking oranges.” When it rained the other day, her daughter and some of the other students, already outside for a sports class, got a green light to play in it and get muddy.
Another parent, Ilia Morrows, called Jordan Glen a “little unicorn of a school.”
Like Hamlin-Vogler, Morrows enrolled her kids, 11-year-old twins Breck and Lucas, following the Covid-connected school closures. She thought they’d stay a year, then return to public school. But after a year, they didn’t want to go back. “They had a taste of freedom,” she said.
For many parents, Jordan Glen hits a sweet spot between traditional and alternative.
On the traditional side, Jordan Glen students are immersed in core academics. They take tests, including standardized tests. They get grades and report cards. They play sports like soccer and tennis, and they’re good enough at the latter to win the county’s middle school championship. Many of them move on to the area’s top academic high schools.
But Jordan Glen also does a lot differently.
Students spend a lot of time outdoors at Jordan Glen School. Activities include archery, gardening and sports. Photo by Ron Matus
The students are grouped into multi-age and multi-grade classrooms. They choose from an ever-changing menu of electives. Many of those classes are taught by teachers, but some are taught by parents (like archery, gardening, and fishing), and some by the students themselves (like soccer, dance, and book club). The youngest students also do a “forest school” class once a week.
The school also emphasizes character education.
The older students serve as mentors for the younger students. They’re taught peer mediation so they can settle disputes. Every afternoon, they clean the school, working as crew leaders with teams of younger students. Their “Senior Class Guide” stresses nothing is more important than “caring about others.”
“The way the older kids take care of the younger kids, it’s very noticeable. They are genuinely caring,” Morrows said. At Jordan Glen, “they teach community. They teach being a good human.”
“My favorite thing is that most kids really get a good sense of self and self-confidence at this school,” Hamlin-Vogler said. “Some people say, ‘Oh, that’s the hippie school.’ But the students have a lot of expectations and personal accountability put on them.”
Hamlin-Vogler said without the education choice scholarships, she and her husband wouldn’t be able to afford the school. Hamlin-Vogler is a hairdresser. Her husband is a music producer. Before Florida made every student eligible for scholarships in 2023, they missed the income eligibility threshold by $1,000. Her parents were able to assist with tuition in the short term, but that would not have been sustainable.
Her family harbors no animus toward public schools. Atticus attended them prior to Jordan Glen, and he’s likely to be at a public high school next fall. Ellie, meanwhile, thinks she might want to try the neighborhood school even though she loves Jordan Glen in every way, and Hamlin-Vogler said that would be fine.
After Ellie described how much fun she had playing in the rain, though, Hamlin-Vogler had to remind her, “You might not get to do that at another school.”
The future of education is happening now. In Florida. And public school districts are pushing into new frontiers by making it possible for all students, including those on education choice scholarships, to access the best they have to offer on a part-time basis.
That was the message Keith Jacobs, director of provider development at Step Up For Students, delivered on Excel in Education’s “Policy Changes Lives” podcast A former public school teacher and administrator, Jacobs has spent the past year helping school districts expand learning options for students who receive funding through education savings accounts. These accounts allow parents to use funds for tuition, curriculum, therapies, and other pre-approved educational expenses. That includes services by approved district and charter schools.
“So, what makes Florida so unique is that we have done something that five, 10, even, you know, further down the line, 20 years ago, you would have never thought would have happened,” Jacobs said during a discussion with podcast host Ben DeGrow.
Jacobs explained how the process works:
“I’m a home education student and I want to be an engineer, and the high school up the street has a remarkable engineering professor. I can contract with the school district and pay out of my education savings account for that engineering course at that school.
“It’s something that was in theory for so long, but now it’s in practice here in Florida.”
It is also becoming more widespread in an environment supercharged by the passage of House Bill 1 in 2023, which made all K-12 students in Florida eligible for education choice scholarships regardless of family income. According to Jacobs, more than 50% of the state’s 67 school districts, including Miami-Dade, Orange, Hillsborough and Duval, are either already approved or have applied to be contracted providers.
That’s a welcome addition in Florida, where more than 500,000 students are using state K-12 scholarship programs and 51% of all students are using some form of choice.
Jacobs said district leaders’ questions have centered on the logistics of participating, such as how the funding process works, how to document attendance and handle grades.
Once the basics are established, Jacobs wants to help districts find ways to remove barriers to part-time students’ participation. Those could include offering courses outside of the traditional school day or setting up classes that serve only those students.
Jacobs said he expects demand for public school services to grow as Florida families look for more ways to customize their children’s education. That will lead to more opportunities for public schools to benefit and change the narrative that education is an adversarial, zero-sum game to one where everyone wins.
“So, basically, the money is following the child and not funding a specific system. So, when you shift that narrative from ‘you're losing public school kids’ to ‘families are empowered to use their money for public school services,’ it really shifts that narrative on what's happening here, specifically in Florida.”
Jacobs expects other states to emulate Florida as their own programs and the newly passed federal tax credit program give families more money to spend on customized learning. He foresees greater freedom for teachers to become entrepreneurs and districts to become even more innovative.
“There is a nationwide appetite for education choice and families right now…We have over 18 states who have adopted some form of education savings accounts in their state. So, the message to states outside of Florida is to listen to what the demands of families are.”
