Lower than two months after the applying season started, record-breaking curiosity continues with greater than 500,000 college students making use of for Florida’s Okay-12 training selection scholarships.
Step Up For College students, the nonprofit group that administers 98% of the state’s scholarships, opened functions for the 2026-27 faculty 12 months on Feb. 1. A file 200,000 utilized in the course of the first three days.
By noon on Feb. 10, a complete of 300,106 college students had utilized for scholarships, representing an 11.7% enhance over the identical 10-day interval final 12 months. By Friday morning, Feb. 27, a complete of 401,507 college students had utilized.
Purposes reached the five hundred,000 mark on March 30, which was 22 days sooner than in 2025.
Step Up For College students CEO Gretchen Schoenhaar mentioned the group’s staff and programs had been prepared for the surge of curiosity. Step Up’s expertise programs processed 15% extra functions on the primary day this 12 months than at the identical time final 12 months. Of the households who known as for help, greater than 90% reported being “happy” or “very happy” with the help they acquired.
Since its inception in 2002, Step Up has administered greater than 3 million scholarships.
Throughout the 25-26 faculty 12 months, greater than 525,000 college students have been funded on Florida’s Okay-12 scholarship packages to entry studying choices of their selection. If these college students had been counted as a single faculty district, it might be the biggest within the state and the third largest within the nation. That makes Florida the nationwide chief in training choices.
Nonetheless, not all households find yourself utilizing their scholarships. High causes embrace: Their most popular personal faculty lacked capability; they had been on a waitlist for a constitution faculty and had been accepted; they selected to attend a district faculty, and so forth.
Step Up is on observe this faculty 12 months to have 2.75 million transactions on MyScholarShop, its on-line market, for over $425 million. Step Up is on observe to course of over 4.5 million reimbursement requests this 12 months, value over $595 million, 4 instances what it had simply two years in the past.
Present scholarship households have till April 30 to resume their scholarships for the subsequent faculty 12 months. All households who desire a PEP scholarship should additionally apply by April 30.
