Miami-Dade public schools projected to lose another 8,000 students as vouchers surge

Education admin June 11, 2026 0 Comments

Miami-Dade public schools projected to lose another 8,000 students as vouchers surge

In the next school year, the number of Miami-Dade students using vouchers to attend private schools will increase by about 10,000 to 82,500 and the number of students attending traditional public schools will likely decrease by 8,000 to 217,100, according to projections by the Miami-Dade public school district.

The data was presented at a committee meeting Wednesday and confirms the trend of declining enrollment in one of the nation’s largest school districts.

Miami-Dade has long been losing enrollment at its traditional public schools. In the 2006-2007 school year, the district reported 351,700 students attending those schools. The 2026-2027 estimate of 217,100 marks a 135,000-student, or 38.3%, decline over two decades.

The district experienced a drop in enrollment of about 13,000 students in the 2025-26 school year. School officials have linked the dramatic decline to fewer newly arriving immigrants from other countries, declining birth rates, and families leaving for more affordable places.

The data presented Wednesday at the board’s budget workshop highlights that enrollment at charter schools has remained healthy and use of the state’s universal voucher program has flourished in Miami-Dade as the traditional public school population declines. Both charter schools and private school vouchers have been championed by the Florida legislature and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as alternatives to traditional public schools.

Voucher use in the county remained flat for more than a decade, hovering around 4,000, before the 2018-2019 school year. It rose by 3,000 two years in a row after the passage of the initial Family Empowerment Scholarship program in 2019, created to give students from families with limited financial resources the opportunity to attend a private school.

The number of students using vouchers jumped again after a 2021 law expanding voucher eligibility, nearly doubling from 10,900 in 2020-2021 to 21,100 the next school year. Since vouchers became universally available to private school students in the 2023-2024 school year, voucher use has increased by more than 10,000 each year.

Charter school enrollment, which is usually included in the count for total public school enrollment, is projected to remain roughly the same at 86,400. In 2006-2007, about 12,000 students attended charter schools in Miami-Dade, according to the data.

With the number of students utilizing the vouchers — averaging — Miami-Dade County Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Ron Steiger said that, technically, more students in the county are funded by taxpayers than ever.

Private school enrollment has increased over the past two decades. In 2004-2005, the mark in Miami-Dade was about 70,500. In 2024-2025, the last year for which data is publicly available, that figure was about 92,400; a majority of them, 60,850, used vouchers.

“The number of private school students hasn’t changed all that much over the decades… What’s changed is that now they are funded, not entirely, but partially funded by the taxpayers,” Steiger said.

MDCPS budget implications

Student enrollment numbers affect the district’s bottom line.

Florida’s formula for state funding to public schools, the Florida Education Financing Program, is informed partially by overall enrollment. The funds going to Miami-Dade County Public Schools average out to about $9,629 per student.

After cutting the 2025-2026 school year’s $7.4 billion budget by $89 million halfway through the school year, Steiger and Superintendent Jose Dotres presented to the board Wednesday a plan to cut another $63 million in the next school year.

About $10 million of those savings are projected to come from the consolidation of schools — the board will vote next Wednesday on closing and consolidating four different campuses, and could close more in the near future — and other programs. Another $10 million would come via cuts to central office operations; $24 million would be cut in special allocations to small schools and $15 million would come from the support position “pool” that funds employees like custodians and clerical staff.

Steiger’s presentation also highlighted how the district has taken measures to reduce spending, like cutting off purchasing cards and decreasing non-school spending.

“We have taken evasive action this year to make sure that we bring our spending as low as possible. However, that’s not sustainable, right? It’s not a way that we can run the district forever… We need to be able to operate in a way that you can get away with for one year, but you cannot get away with in perpetuity,” Steiger said.

An additional challenge is inflation. While the total state funding per student will increase to $9,629 next school year, that rate hasn’t kept up with inflation, per district data. If the formula had kept up with inflation from the 2006-2007 mark of $6,867, the per-student funding would be $12,018, Steiger said.

District officials say they and the board have adopted a frugal approach in response. About 96% of spending, Steiger said, goes toward “school level services.” That puts Miami-Dade in a league of its own when it comes to “efficiency,” Steiger said.

Broward County Public Schools spends 93.1% of its funds on school level services, and in Orange County that mark is 90.2%.