Private and homeschool vouchers are beginning to take a heavier toll on the Flagler County school district as enrollment is forecast to decline by 432 students by fall, a 3 percent decline, reducing the district’s funding by $2.5 million. That’s equivalent to 30 fewer teachers.
“This year, between today and June 30, we have to make up that deficit of $2.5 million,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said. The district did not know that until the state’s latest financial calculation in spring, narrowing the window for the district to make its cuts.
The district is not in crisis. Its reserves are at 9 percent in a $155 million budget, Moore said. (In the budget presented to board members last fall, the reserve by June 30 was projected to be $9.5 million in a budget of $155 million.)
The district in previous years built up its reserve thanks to the Biden administration’s Covid-era aid (the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund). The Flagler district’s share was $14.6 million by March 31, 2023. That money has dried up. “We don’t have those dollars. And so we don’t have a means to build up the fund balance [that is, the reserve], other than to make cuts and reductions,” Moore said in an hour-long interview with FlaglerLive.
Moore does not expect layoffs. Those 30 teachers will not be fired or laid off. “We’ll make it up in positions of individuals who have left,” Moore said, looking to attrition to account for the reduction. At least this year. “Some of it may have to come out of our fund balance, but the majority of it, we will get through vacancies.”
Moore is concerned about the future. “It’s going to be a pattern,” she said. “Forty-seven out of 67 school districts in the state of Florida are either at a stagnant or declining enrollment.” Declining enrollment means declining dollars to fund local schools.
The St. Johns County school district, the top-rated in the state, has been opening one new school a year for 10 years. Next year, it is scheduled to open two new K-8 schools with a capacity for 2,600 students between them. Yet it is forecast to have only 95 additional students next year. “How in the world are you telling me that St. Johns County is slated to go up 95 kids? If that happens, there should be, like, an outrage,” Moore said.
Last month, a report by the state Education Estimating Conference projected public school enrollment statewide to go from 2,805,298 in the 2025-2026 fiscal year to 2,742,162 in the 2029-2030 fiscal year.
Flagler County had been projecting the need for a new middle and high school this decade. No longer. That’s been pushed out seven to 10 years–if then, even as the district continues to take in school impact fees from builders and developers, because construction has not slowed.
The deficit and falling enrollment is a direct result of Florida’s relatively new voucher program, which gives tax dollars–or “vouchers”–to families so they can send their children to private schools or educate them at home. The initiative, enacted in 2023, was championed by then House Speaker Paul Renner, who also represented Flagler County.
The voucher program pays families $8,000 for each student in kindergarten through third grade, and a bit less for older students. That’s for general-education students. Students with disabilities or special needs receive far higher amounts in voucher money–from $10,800 to $34,000 per student.
Angela O’Brien, FlaglerCounty’s assistant superintendent for academic services, says 323 students have been withdrawn for home education this year alone, and an additional 172 were withdrawn for the so-called Personalized Education Program (PEP), one of the state’s voucher programs, whose acceptance rate is not open-ended. So many parents opt to homeschool as they wait for an opening in PEP. (Note: the withdrawal numbers are higher than in an earlier version of the story; today’s numbers are updated as of today; the previous numbers were based on calculations late last month.)
Flagler County’s enrollment has been flat for 15 to 16 years, hovering in the 12,500 to 13,500 range. For the first time in those 15 years, Moore says the state is forecasting an actuarial decline directly related to the voucher program.
The state forecast for enrollment in Flagler County schools a year ago was for 13,687 students–not including VPK, but including the 900-odd students who attend Imagine, the charter school in Town Center, and the nearly 200 students who attend iFlagler, the virtual school.
In March, the district was 161 students short of that. It had 13,526 students, even though it had reported 13,854 students to the state in February.
The state’s forecast for the 2025-26 school year is a further decline, to 13,249
“What that is saying is the state anticipates about 400 students to either not enroll with us full time, or to leave us to go with the voucher program,” compared with the year-ago forecast, Moore said.
Students are required to unenroll from the district to take advantage of the voucher program. If a student wants to take a class with the district, the family must contract with the district to pay it directly, or to inform the state to pay the district for the service, “for any school service that you are going to elect to receive from the district if you have withdrawn from us.” But those contracts are not making up for lost dollars.
And it’s not quite any service: students don’t have to pay to participate in athletic or afterschool programs, even though it’s the existing students in brick-and-mortar schools who generate state funding who make those extra curricular activities possible.
In the state’s second funding calculation earlier this year, $10 million was going to be generated for the voucher program in Flagler County. By the third calculation, the number went up to $14 million. “What this is saying is either more students did not select us,” Moore said, “or they left us, or more students who were in the community, already receiving their education in a different way, took the voucher.”
The state puts that money in the district’s budget, then withdraws it. It makes it appear as if the district’s budget has $14 million more than it actually does. But the district will never see that money. Obviously, the district is not losing $14 million. That figure represents the funding for all Flagler County students receiving voucher money, including students who were attending private schools or being homeschool to start with–and had never enrolled in Flagler schools–and are now opting to take the voucher money. Moore and O’Brien estimate that number of students at 2,000 or just above that.
But it’s out of that $14 million that the district is directly losing the $2.5 million in funding it could previously count on. This is where it gets critical for the district.
“Our schools are going to experience a decrease in the number of staff that they have on their campus,” Moore said. Curiously, the majority of the withdrawals from schools has taken place in secondary schools–Matanzas High School and Flagler Palm Coast High School–not in elementary schools. Elementary schools’ kindergarten enrollment is lower this year (there’s no data suggesting that kindergarten students are going the voucher route), but other elementary grades are maintaining their numbers.
The drop in enrollment is also affecting federal funding. “We are anticipating this next year to be pretty level funded,” O’Brien said, “but what we do have to do is pull out money for private schools. There’s a proportionate share that goes to our private schools.”
The long-term sustainability of the public school system is in question.
“It’s not about this year. It’s about two years from now, what this will look like. That is what we have to look at and we have to be asking, as a community,” More said. “How do we afford this four years from now, five years from now? What does education look like? What does the standard of education look like three years from now, four years from now? I think right now people are just looking at today, and I’m not thinking about today. I’m definitely thinking about two years from now, three years from now.”
Leave a Reply