“We can all be very proud of how far this program has come in a short amount of time,” Burgess said in a news release. “However, to ensure our school choice programs live up to their full potential and promise, there are challenges we need to address.”

The audit found that the state lacked reliable information about the whereabouts of roughly 30,000 scholarship students, that more than $270 million in funds on any given day could not be accurately tied to the correct school or program, and that $100 million intended for public schools was improperly used for scholarships last year.

Gaetz said the bill addresses those gaps while creating a clearer, more stable funding system.

Under SB 318, the Family Empowerment Scholarship would be funded through its own categorical allocation within the Florida Education Finance Program, rather than being counted in the public-school formula. The change reflects an Auditor General recommendation to separate funding streams for public, private, and home-education students.

The bill would also:

• Establish fall and spring scholarship application windows and require a single application for all programs.
• Require families to document that a student is enrolled in a private school, a registered home-education program, or a Personalized Education Program.
• Require the State Department of Education to assign a Florida student ID to all scholarship recipients and cross-check applications against district enrollment files.
• Shift scholarship payments from quarterly to monthly, with eligibility verified before each payment.
• Create standardized reimbursement and invoicing procedures and expand allowable uses of funds, including some career and technical student organization fees.
• Reduce the scholarship management fee for Scholarship Funding Organizations and require them to return funds if audit findings warrant repayment.
• Require annual end-of-year audits and new reporting on student mobility within the program.
• Direct the Department of Education to evaluate options for more efficient scholarship administration, including competitively bid performance-based contracts with SFOs.

The proposal also allows districts to sell individual services to scholarship students and permits the use of stabilization funds to support districts facing enrollment declines.