Miami-Dade schools prepare to tighten belt as vouchers surge in popularity

Education admin August 3, 2026 0 Comments

Miami-Dade schools prepare to tighten belt as vouchers surge in popularity

Miami-Dade’s public school district is moving forward with a $7.36 billion budget, marking a 3.6% reduction in operating expenses compared to last year, citing an historic jump in private school vouchers, rising costs and not enough funding from the state to match that increase.

— presented to the public last Wednesday at a hearing — also included projections for the first-ever decline in charter school enrollment in Miami-Dade County. After several years of traditional public school population decline, the charter school population is expected to drop by more than 1,800 students, falling to 86,400.

Meanwhile, the number of students in the county claiming the state’s private school voucher — essentially available to any student attending private school, averaging more than $8,000 per student in Miami-Dade — has skyrocketed. At 82,500, a projected increase of more than 10,000, almost as many students are projected to get a private school voucher as attend charter schools.

One of the drivers for the budget reduction is the decreasing number of students attending traditional public schools, which has been declining for two decades and is set to drop by another 8,000 pupils this school year, to 217,100.

Having fewer students means receiving less per-pupil funding through Florida’s state funding formula.

The district wrote in its budget that declining enrollment, “along with the significant increase in our health insurance costs and the looming loss of state revenues, will force the district to implement very tight spending guidelines in order to protect its workforce and ensure its financial viability.”

In another section, the budget authors wrote that their state funding decrease is “mostly due to” the increasing number of students taking Family Empowerment Scholarships and leaving the public school system.

About $766 million in state funding is projected to go towards the vouchers, compared to just $661 million last year, due to the anticipated jump in voucher-taking students.

‘The real villain’

Though explanations for the drop in students vary, one expert told the Herald that the answer is straightforward: the birth rate.

“The real villain is young people. They’re not having enough kids,” Margeurite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said.

The student membership numbers at both traditional public schools and charter schools, provided in the budget, reflect a continued decrease in new births. The county’s four oldest classes, grades 9-12, hovered above 26,500 last October. In contrast, the district’s kindergarten class was only 18,700 and the 1st Grade class had about 21,000.

Though layoffs have not occurred, the number of teachers in the public school system has been sliding for the last ten years. In the 2017-2018 school year, MDCPS employed 18,275 teachers. Last school year, 15,322 schoolteachers were on the payroll. The number is likely to be lower this is school year, as hirings have not outpaced retirements and resignations.

Central office staff has been affected as well, with the board approving a recent proposal to eliminate 168 general fund positions, 41 of them administrative and 19 of them instructional. The district is projected to pay $49 million less in salaries than it did last school year, with $2.64 billion slated for district salaries and benefits.

As for schools managed by Miami-Dade County Public Schools — the budget includes pass-through figures for both charter schools and vouchers — the total general fund budget for their operation is decreasing by 5.15%, from $2.53 billion to $2.4 billion, with decreased student body size.

The budget is crafted under the assumption that a referendum going before Miami-Dade residents to keep a property tax for schools passes. Voters previously approved the tax by wide margins in 2018 and 2022.

This year’s budget calculates the financial impact of the vote at $569.5 million. About 88% of the money would go toward “instructional related pay increases,” and the remaining 12% would fund security, according to the budget documents.

The district school board moved to tentatively adopt the proposed budget after a hearing on the document Wednesday. A second public hearing and final passage vote needs to take place before it’s fully adopted.