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House subcommittee hears DOE, SFOs on 22,000 scholarship payment matches and $44 million tied to questionable accounts
Summary
The PreK–12 Budget Subcommittee examined first-quarter cross-checks of FY25–26 scholarship payment files after Florida Department of Education data showed roughly 22,000 potential matches between scholarship recipients and public-school enrollments; SFOs said about $44 million was initially released for matched accounts and roughly $7 million was spent before freezes.
Chair Maloca convened the PreK–12 Budget Subcommittee to review how scholarship payment files were cross-checked after the Department of Education (DOE) reported about 22,000 matched students in the first-quarter files for fiscal year 2025–26.
DOE executive director Adam Emerson told the committee that scholarship funding organizations (SFOs) timely submitted payment files but that the files—submitted under DOE specifications—did not always include the Florida student identification (FLEID) on every record. DOE processed the files, then asked school districts to use a School Choice portal to cross-check students against district records. Emerson said the outreach to districts occurred in mid-to-late August and that district data used for final verification (for example, 20-day counts) is sometimes not available until later, which constrained DOE's ability to resolve all matches before statutory payment dates.
Alexis Lareau of Step Up for Students told the committee Step Up—identified 18,226 UA matches and 3,396 EO matches among FES students in the first-quarter cross-check. Step Up said it began contacting families on Sept. 5 and, by the Sept. 30 deadline, had received 5,133 responses across scholarship programs. Step Up reported it received roughly $44 million tied to matched students and estimated about $7 million of those funds were already spent prior to account freezes.
Patty Frobel of AAA Scholarship Foundation said AAA—had far fewer matches (dozens) and that AAA froze funds, notified families, and returned funds for students who failed to respond or provide required documentation.
District representatives described operational challenges. Katie Foley, who supports 22 small and rural districts, said districts received an Aug. 14 memo with a four-day turnaround window and that the initial memo did not clearly define what constituted a match. Orange County—senior director Dorian Bennett said OCPS built custom queries to fuzzy-match records and reviewed roughly 39,000 records, finding about 40 potential matches and confidently confirming only five due to name variations and data-quality issues.
DOE told SFOs to freeze funds for matched accounts until families submitted a standard withdrawal form or the district provided a statement that a student had never been enrolled in public school. Emerson said DOE would request formal return of funds from SFOs or arrange withholding from future payments if needed.
Committee members pressed DOE and SFOs about process improvements for quarter 2. DOE said it had issued a clarified memo and would refine technical guidance for districts. SFOs said they added an upload function in parent accounts to streamline submission of withdrawal forms. Districts urged DOE to publish exact match criteria (for example, first name, last name, date of birth, gender) and to allow longer turnaround (Foley recommended 8–14 days) to reduce manual work and errors.
The committee did not take formal action on policy changes; members set the discussion up for follow-up questions and the subsequent DOE presentation on FLEID assignment.
