JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Friday morning at a private school in Jacksonville to mark more than 500,000 students approved for school choice scholarships.
The event at Trinity Christian Academy featured Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who offered further specifics.
“The number is 524,000 students that have been approved for the Family Empowerment Scholarship, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the personalized education option, which if those students were a district (...) it would be in top three largest school districts in the country, but the difference is that these programs don’t lock students into a ‘one size fits all,’ including the fact that we’ve increased our Students with Unique Abilities program by 75% since 2022,” Diaz said.
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Diaz and DeSantis set their baseline at the enacting of HB 1, a law that made its way through the Florida Legislature in 2023 to expand eligibility of the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship and Family Empowerment Scholarship to any Florida resident eligible to enroll in kindergarten through 12th grade in a public school.
“So, we’re coming up on the next legislative session, there’ll be some things that you got to do to, to tweak this or that, but I think we can look back over the last six years and say what’s been done in Florida has had huge, huge life-changing effects in a positive way on so many families throughout the state of Florida and that’s ultimately what it’s all about,” DeSantis said.
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