Escambia board presses state-level fix for voucher tracking; superintendent cites $50M in scholarships counted in FEFP

Board members raised concerns about the district’s role in tracking students tied to state scholarship programs and whether the state’s proposed student ID numbers can reliably prevent duplication. One board member said the only reliable identifier would be Social Security numbers and urged the state to remove scholarship students from the district’s FEFP count.

"Student ID numbers will never do it. They're gonna have to do it by SSN," a board member said, arguing the state must provide a single unique identifier to allow accurate tracking and fraud detection. The superintendent (speaker 14) said Escambia, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties are preparing language to ask local legislators for clarification and described prior counts: the district was listed with 287 scholarship students one year and 315 in another, and scholarship amounts in the state reports can total about $50,000,000 though the district does not receive those funds because the state’s FEFP calculation adjusts scholarship dollars out before final distributions.

The superintendent said the district’s data systems continue to list any student tied to Escambia County in the local database even where scholarship funding does not flow through the district. He offered to show the FEFP calculations to board members to illustrate how the scholarships are counted and adjusted.

Board members agreed this is primarily a state-level tracking problem and suggested working with neighboring districts and the local delegation to clarify statute and FEFP calculations. No formal board action was taken at the workshop.