Florida created a special scholarship for low-income students in 2001 because it recognized that many of them struggle in school and few of them have options. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is aimed at giving these students one learning option that is not available to them because of their financial circumstances. It allows them to consider whether a private school might be a better fit academically.
The program now serves more than 38,000 students in 1,185 private schools throughout the state, and the mix is truly eclectic. The schools that have chosen to join the cause of helping underprivileged students run the gamut – everything from the six-student Walden Middle School in Gulfport to the middle school in Pinellas to 1,512-student Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy High School in Fort Lauderdale. The average school in the 2011-2012 school year had 32 scholarship students, though 67 had more than 100 students each and 55 had only one each.
Principal Kathleen Kiley, whose St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando has won the national Blue Ribbon School award, views the program this way: “If it wasn’t for the scholarship, there’s no way (the neighborhood kids) could afford to go here. Now, they can go to a nationally recognized school.”
The Tax Credit Scholarship program is Florida is overseen by nonprofit Scholarship Funding Organizations, and Step Up For Students is currently the only organization that is active in raising private funds and distributing scholarships. Step Up has its own Office of School Development that helps schools navigate the process of applying to the state Department of Education for participation in the scholarship program. Step Up also reviews the applications for parents each year to determine their eligibility for the program. Once a student is approved for a scholarship, the family itself decides which school the student should attend.
The scholarship is paid out in installments throughout the school year, with both the parent and the school endorsing the check, and the maximum scholarship for 2011-2012 is $4,011. Under a new law adopted in 2010, the scholarship will climb to 80 percent of the per-student operational formula for public schools, and Step Up estimates the scholarship will exceed $6,000 by 2015.