Seven private schools from across Florida have taken Step Up For Students to court, accusing the nonprofit that runs the state’s private school scholarship system of quietly starving them of cash for years. The schools say millions of dollars in approved aid never showed up or arrived short or mislabeled, blowing holes in budgets, forcing program cuts, and in some cases pushing school operators to dip into personal savings or high‑interest loans just to keep the lights on. The lawsuit is asking for money the schools say they are owed and for a top‑to‑bottom cleanup of how scholarship dollars are tracked and paid out.
Jacksonville attorney Lamonte W. Carter of the Carter Firm, who is representing the schools, told reporters the plaintiffs estimate they have each been shorted between roughly $500,000 and $1 million over the last five years, according to Action News Jax. Carter also said that somewhere between "$300 million to $600 million" in Florida Department of Education funds that move through the scholarship system cannot currently be traced. He argues the alleged shortfalls have hit programs serving students with disabilities especially hard.
Who Joined the Suit
The complaint pulls in schools from every corner of the state: Square Pegs Learning Center in Panama City, Mountaineer’s School of Autism in West Palm Beach, Lakeland Institute for Learning, Educational Harbor Christian School in Palmetto, Diverse Abilities School in Southwest Ranches, iCity Christian School in Jacksonville, and Dickens Sanomi Academy in Plantation. The case was filed in the Fourth Judicial Circuit in Duval County, according to WLRN. The stations report the schools want both repayment of what they say are missing scholarship funds and formal changes to how those payments are calculated and delivered. Administrators and their attorney were expected to outline their claims at a press conference at the Carter Firm.
Special‑Needs Students Hit Hardest
The schools say many of the payments at issue were supposed to cover therapies, specialists, and tailored instruction for students with disabilities. Instead, they allege, some payments arrived late, short, or not at all, sometimes with delays stretching over years. That, they say, left classrooms without crucial supports and staff. To keep services intact, school operators report paying expenses out of pocket and taking on steep, short‑term loans, according to Action News Jax. Carter told the station the lawsuit is aimed not only at recouping money but also at forcing systemic fixes, including clearer, more reliable audit schedules.
Step Up For Students Pushes Back
Step Up For Students is not taking the allegations quietly. The organization has labeled the schools’ claims “unfounded” and insists the complaints “are not indicative of any larger issues with the programs,” according to WLRN. The nonprofit says it works closely with families and schools to iron out payment disputes and flatly rejects the idea that there is widespread mismanagement of scholarship funds. Step Up, which administers scholarships for hundreds of thousands of students statewide, says it plans to defend its payment systems in court.
Lawmakers Move to Tighten Oversight
The lawsuit lands just as lawmakers in Tallahassee are trying to put more guardrails around Florida’s ballooning voucher programs. Earlier this winter, the state Senate unanimously approved a bill that would put private scholarship dollars into a separate account from traditional public‑school funding and would require more frequent checks and audits, according to WFLA. Bill sponsors, including Sen. Don Gaetz, say they are responding to past audit findings that officials could not always confirm where tens of thousands of students were actually enrolled or whether they were eligible for aid. Attorneys for the schools argue the proposal still does not require audits often enough to catch problems in real time.
Legal Note
The case is a civil complaint filed in Duval County’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, whose downtown Jacksonville courthouse maintains public records and filing information on its website. Through civil discovery, the parties could be required to turn over invoices, payment ledgers, and Department of Education records that might show whether scholarship funds were delayed, misrouted, or miscoded. If the schools convince a judge that there have been systemic underpayments, they could seek damages, interest, and detailed changes to how scholarships are verified and paid out.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say they will push for both repayment and reform, while Step Up has signaled it will vigorously defend its operations. The dispute now heads into the slow grind of motions, discovery, and hearings in the months ahead, with court filings and any new legislative moves likely to reveal more about how Florida’s voucher dollars actually flow.
.jpg){kind=link}