- May 6, 2026
Flagler County Schools has lost 1,926 students to Family Empowerment Scholarships this year, according to the Florida Department of Education’s third quarter calculation.
The school district lost about 100 students since the district’s October forecast. With the increase in scholarships, the district will lose about $400,000 in state funding, Chief Financial Officer Patty Wormeck told the School Board at an information workshop on April 28.
The third calculation, which was released in January, is based on October’s full-time equivalent enrollment count.
“The third calc drives our funding for the rest of the fiscal year [through June 30],” Wormeck said.
The district can absorb the loss because of its $10.2 million unrestricted general fund balance reserve, which would roughly cover a month’s worth of payroll if needed. Over 80% of general fund expenditures are personnel costs, Wormeck said.
Board policy requires a fund balance of 5 to 8% of the general fund. The current fund balance is about 7.8%, Wormeck said.
Losing 100 more students across the district is not going to precipitate Flagler Schools to decrease positions, Superintendent LaShakia Moore said.
“[Losing] $400,000 is a big deal,” Moore said, noting that other factors have had a financial impact, such as $350,000 lost last month on increased fuel costs and a significant increase in health insurance premiums.
The number of Flagler students receiving Family Empowerment Scholarships have increased every year since 2020-21 when 136 Flagler families received the scholarships. Last year, the number of Flagler students receiving scholarships was 1,606. That number grew by more than 300 this year. But not all of the students have left Flagler Schools. Some were never enrolled in the district. They were already attending private schools or were being home-schooled and took advantage of the scholarships once they became eligible for the program.
Moore said that last year and this year were the first times that vouchers decreased the district’s enrollment numbers. Before that, most of the recipients were never enrolled in public schools in the county, she said.
Moore also noted that there are still students who are enrolled in Flagler Schools whose families have received a scholarship.
“It’s a very extensive process in order to get the funds released to us as well as in the future to make sure we don’t have those duplications,” Moore said. “I think the DOE will agree that there is still work to be done on that. It’s better than it was, but it continues to be an issue.”
Further complicating the issue is that many families who received vouchers are now choosing partial enrollment or full enrollment and paying the district directly.
Board member Janie Ruddy noted the situation is worse in neighboring districts where they are considering shutting down schools.
In some cases, public schools may have a disadvantage. Some freedoms that come with scholarships, Moore said, are not afforded to public schools. The thought process is sometimes more of a financial decision because of having more options, she said.
“When families leave us we ask them to tell us the reason and what we could do differently,” Moore said. “There are families coming back.”
Ruddy said that the David Demographics report of 2023 projected Flagler Schools to have over 14,000 students by this year. “And we’re not hitting that,” she said.
The FDOE’s total enrollment for Flagler Schools based on a survey earlier in the school year is 13,336. Enrollment is not expected to rise in the immediate future, because of a number of issues.
Ruddy and Wormeck noted that birthrates are decreasing. Kindergarten enrollment is going down statewide, Wormeck said. In Flagler, the number of outgoing seniors is much larger than the number of incoming freshmen and the number of fifth graders graduating from elementary school is much larger than the number of incoming kindergarteners, Wormeck said, although kindergarten enrollment won’t be precisely known until July when many parents register their children.
A few years ago, the School Board discussed building a new high school and/or middle school. With Palm Coast’s planned westward expansion that will likely still become a reality, but building a school now, Moore said, would be irresponsible.
