{"id":135094,"date":"2026-01-28T16:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/135094\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T16:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:24:17","slug":"gov-desantis-signs-on-to-federal-education-freedom-tax-credit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/135094\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. DeSantis signs on to federal Education Freedom Tax Credit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">School choice proponents have something to celebrate this School Choice Week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gov.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/flgov.com\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Ron DeSantis<\/a> is announcing that he will <a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/776423-most-gop-governors-already-opted-into-school-choice-federal-tax-credits-why-hasnt-gov-desantis\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">join 23 other Republican Governors<\/a> and embrace the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ed.gov\/about\/news\/press-release\/us-departments-of-education-and-treasury-release-joint-fact-sheet-historic-education-freedom-tax-credit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Education Freedom Tax Credit<\/a>. He says it will give \u201cmore resources, more options\u201d and be a meaningful supplement to what Florida is already doing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">DeSantis was the only Republican Governor of any Southern State who hadn\u2019t approved the school choice provision, which was included in the Big Beautiful Bill tax cut package <a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/746076-donald-trump-signs-his-tax-and-spending-cut-bill-at-the-white-house-july-4-picnic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">signed<\/a>\u00a0by President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe don\u2019t really know how many taxpayers are going to opt into this or not,\u201d DeSantis said at <a href=\"http:\/\/gracechristianschool.com\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Grace Christian School<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/downtownvalrico.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Valrico<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cAnd we don\u2019t know how many states, you know, are going to ultimately participate in this. But there is going to be some level of money to where students will be able to be eligible for some of these scholarships. And so this will start January of 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/beckerlawyers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-774002 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Becker-Print-Ads-EMPOWER_728-x-90.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He also raised questions about the need to opt in at all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI\u2019m not sure why they did that,\u201d DeSantis said, noting that Florida and other states that support school choice have likely already approved policies promoting other schooling options.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWhere you really need these scholarships, you need to get into Chicago and give these kids a lifeline, right? You need to get into Los Angeles,\u201d he added, suggesting that teachers\u2019 unions in blue states will oppose opting in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The credit will allow any entity to claim a tax credit of up to $1,700 a year to offset donations to any type of support for school choice educational scholarships. That would be on top of other scholarships offered by states.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Currently, Florida provides universal choice education scholarships to cover up to $9,000 in private school tuition. But if a family donated $1,700 on top of that to a state-authorized organization like Step Up For Students, which awards Florida\u2019s school choice scholarships, the funding could be awarded for education purposes by Step Up, and the donor could get a deduction on federal income taxes equal to the among given.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/rubinturnbull.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/rt_webad_728x90.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-335063\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">DeSantis said he wanted to make sure it wouldn\u2019t \u201csubtract from what we\u2019re doing\u201d before opting in.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>A.G. Gancarski and Jacob Ogles of Florida Politics contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"School choice proponents have something to celebrate this School Choice Week. Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis is announcing that he will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66169,28,9932,30,29,66170,412,7538,23402],"class_list":{"0":"post-135094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-educational-freedom-tax-credit","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-department-of-education","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-grace-christian-school","14":"tag-ron-desantis","15":"tag-school-choice","16":"tag-valrico"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}