July 26, 2025
Like many public-school officials around the country, Leon County Schools Superintendent Rocky Hanna is feeling a budget pinch. Federal pandemic-era slush funds have dried up. State monies are down because public school enrollments are down (because birth rates are down). And the current talk in Florida surrounding local property taxes is about cutting them, not raising them.
Nevertheless, Hanna has directed much of his budget-pinch frustration at private school and homeschool families who previously had to pay twice for education (once for their own kids, a second time for everyone else’s kids via taxes).
These families are no longer being treated unfairly. Thanks to Florida’s K-12 scholarship programs, they are now – finally! – able to access the per-pupil funds set aside for their child’s education. And they have been joined by a small number of former Leon County public school students (less than 1.5% of the total student population) who have switched to K-12 scholarship programs since universal school choice was adopted.
No one can fault Hanna for wishing that every student opted to enroll full-time in Leon County Schools. Yet rather than viewing K-12 scholarship families as part of his problem, Hanna ought to recognize that they are – or at least could be – part of the school district’s budget solution.
Here are three reasons why I say that:
- First, Florida’s latest (and greatest!) K-12 scholarship program allows families to purchase courses from multiple providers rather than getting their entire formal education from one school. This means Leon County Schools can now add to their current revenues by offering in-person “a la carte” courses for a fee to families receiving the Personalized Education Program (PEP) scholarship. Forward-thinking superintendents in other parts of the state have started serving part-time PEP students in this way. Hanna ought to join them.
- Second, Leon County Schools ought to sell or lease its surplus classrooms to private providers needing instructional space. Space-sharing agreements help neighborhood schools with declining enrollments remain open (rather than being closed or consolidated, as Hanna fears). And while it may seem odd at first to rent a wing of a public school building to a private microschool, Leon County Schools currently lease space every Sunday to various church groups. Why not generate rental income every day of the week?
- Third, the communities that stand to gain the most from the “new normal” in K-12 education are those that recognize “a rising tide lifts all boats.” So, if Hanna wants to see increased enrollments at Leon County Schools, the best thing he and other local officials can do is to foster the rise of a robust K-12 ecosystem that attracts all kinds of education-minded families to our community.
Such an ecosystem would serve students well as their needs shift over time. For example, my middle son started out as a private school student when we first moved to Tallahassee. He then did a stint as a homeschooler before eventually graduating from Leon High (led by the beloved then-principal Rocky Hanna).
Sadly, stories like my son’s are less common in Tallahassee than in many parts of our state. In recent years, thousands of education-minded families have moved to Florida, thanks in part to the rise in remote work. But these families primarily have been settling in areas of our state that have more robust K-12 ecosystems offering lots of education options beyond just the public schools.
To her great credit, current Leon County School Board chair Laurie Cox understands the need for our community to welcome and embrace all kinds of students – public, private, homeschool, and everything in between. We need other community leaders to join her. Because if we really want to attract education-minded families to Leon County, we need to have a better K-12 ecosystem to offer them.
Put another way, we all need to be working together to help Tallahassee become known as more than just a college town. We need Tallahassee to become known as a K-12 town, too.
William Mattox is the senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.
