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Florida
Liz Barker: Florida’s voucher program at a crossroads
What if a state program were bleeding billions of taxpayer dollars, providing funds to nearly anyone who applied, with minimal oversight?
Fiscal conservatives would demand immediate intervention. They would call for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, insist on accountability from those in power, and demand swift action to protect public money.
While much public attention has focused on charter school expansion, including Schools of Hope, this discussion concerns a different program altogether: Florida’s rapidly expanding, taxpayer-funded voucher program.
That program, particularly the unchecked growth of the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES), now allows public dollars to fund private school and homeschool education on an unprecedented scale.
State officials tout a budget surplus, but independent analysts project that an additional $4–5 billion in annual voucher spending will lead to an imminent budget deficit.
The findings of a recent independent audit of FES are alarming. It examined what happens to these public funds and whether they truly “follow the child,” as Floridians were repeatedly promised.
They did not.
The auditor general was blunt: “Whatever can go wrong with this system has gone wrong.”
The audit raises more questions than answers:
— Why would state legislators steer a previously healthy state budget toward a projected deficit?
— Why is the state unable to account for roughly 30,000 students — representing approximately $270 million in taxpayer dollars — on any given day?
— And why is voucher spending deliberately obscured from public scrutiny by burying it in the public-school funding formula?
According to auditors, Florida’s voucher program has grown faster than the state’s ability to manage it. They identified gaps in real-time tracking, limited verification of eligibility and enrollment, and financial controls that have failed to keep pace with explosive growth.
These are not minor administrative errors; they are flashing warning lights.
Waste, fraud, and abuse are not partisan concerns; they are fiscal ones. Any government program that cannot clearly show where public dollars are or whether they are used appropriately represents a failure of the Legislature’s duty to safeguard taxpayer funds.
It is also important to be honest about what voucher growth truly represents. Despite frequent claims of a mass exodus from public schools, data show that roughly 70%of voucher recipients in recent years were not previously enrolled in public schools.
This is not a story of families fleeing public education. It is a story of public dollars being quietly redirected away from it.
That distinction matters because Florida’s public School Districts remain subject to strict accountability standards that do not apply to private or homeschool programs that receive voucher funds. Public schools must administer state assessments, publish performance data, comply with open-records laws, and undergo regular financial audits.
Public education across Florida is not stagnant. School Districts are actively innovating while serving as responsible stewards of public dollars by expanding career pathways, strengthening partnerships with local employers and higher education, and adapting to an increasingly complex choice landscape. When Districts are supported by stable policy and predictable funding, they lead.
But choice only works when transparency and quality accompany it. If state dollars support a student’s education, those dollars should be accompanied by state-level accountability, including meaningful oversight and participation in statewide assessments.
State dollars should meet state standards.
The audit also makes clear that technical fixes alone are insufficient. As long as voucher funding remains intertwined with public school funding formulas, billions of dollars in voucher spending will remain obscured from public scrutiny. The program must stand on its own.
Florida’s fiscally conservative Senators recognized this reality when they introduced SB318, a bipartisan bill to implement the auditor general’s recommendations and bring transparency and fiscal responsibility to school choice. The House must now follow suit.
Families like mine value school choice. But without meaningful reform, the current system is not financially sustainable.
Fiscal responsibility and educational opportunity are not competing values. Floridians must insist on both.
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Liz Barker is a Sarasota County School Board member.
NEWS
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Florida
Jury selection continues in fatal boat crash trial of South Florida real estate mogul George Pino
MIAMI — A new group of prospective jurors was questioned Tuesday in the trial of South Florida real estate mogul George Pino, who is charged in connection with a 2022 boat crash that killed a teenager in Miami-Dade County.
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During jury selection in a Miami-Dade courtroom, Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez asked potential jurors what they already knew about the case and whether they had recently seen or heard anything about it.
Several prospective jurors said they knew only basic details, including that a fatal boating crash occurred and that a teenage girl died. Others said they recalled media reports that alcohol may have been involved.
As questioning continued, some prospective jurors disclosed connections to schools and communities tied to the case.
Passengers aboard Pino’s boat included his wife, his teenage daughter and 11 of her friends, many of whom attended private schools in Miami-Dade County.
One prospective juror said they graduated from a local private school around the time of the crash and were familiar with some of the students involved.
Another said references to schools and witnesses brought back memories of seeing posts and articles about the incident shared on social media.
A third said their child participates in youth sports with students from schools connected to the case.
Investigators said the boat struck a channel marker while returning from an outing on Biscayne Bay. Seventeen-year-old Lourdes Academy student Lucy Fernandez drowned after the crash.
Tinkler Mendez also addressed concerns that a prospective juror had been viewing a news report about the case on a cellphone while waiting outside the courtroom.
Another prospective juror reported hearing the report but said it was not loud enough for everyone in the area to hear.
Tinkler Mendez reminded prospective jurors to avoid news coverage and social media discussions related to the case as jury selection continues.
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STARKE, Fla. — A Florida man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s infant daughter and throwing her body in a pond three decades ago is set to be executed Tuesday evening.
Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in 1997 for the death a year earlier of 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw.
This would be Florida’s eighth execution so far this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.
According to court records, Lukehart was watching his girlfriend’s baby in February 1996 while his girlfriend was caring for her older daughter, who had been ill. At some point, the girlfriend said Lukehart drove away from their Jacksonville home, and she couldn’t find baby Gabrielle. Lukehart called his girlfriend about 30 minutes later and told her to call police because the baby had been kidnapped and he was chasing the kidnapper.
Later that evening, Lukehart was found in a neighboring county after driving his car off the road. During questioning the next day, Lukehart told investigators that Gabrielle died after he dropped the baby on her head and then shook her. He told police that he panicked and threw the baby in a pond. Law enforcement officers searched the pond and found the child’s body.
The Florida Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s appeals last week. His attorneys had claimed that medication he was taking for kidney disease could have a negative reaction with the lethal injection drugs. They also argued that having only a month between the signing of Lukehart’s death warrant and the execution deprived him of his due process.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s final appeal on Monday.
A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.
Another execution is planned in Florida later this month. Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992.
All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
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