Path to Bright Futures could get dimmer: Proposed bill could make scholarship requirements more challenging

BY RYAN MERARD

In 1997, Florida established the Bright Futures Scholarship program, which can pay for the majority of a student’s four-year college tuition. Ever since then, students in Florida have been rewarded for their hard work throughout high school if certain requirements were met.

The Bright Futures Scholarships consists of four separate scholarship programs. These include the Florida Academic Scholars (FAS), Florida Medallion Scholars (FMS), Gold Seal Vocational Scholars (GSV) and the Gold Seal Cape Scholars (GSC).

“Making a big jump on score levels needed for the scholarships just doesn’t make much sense,” sophomore Nathan Blazer said. “Getting money through these scholarships should not become harder than it already is.”

Only two of the programs provide funding for four-year degrees, which are the FAS and FMS scholarships. To qualify for an FAS scholarship, students have to complete all of their required high school credits, maintain a 3.5 unweighted grade point average (GPA) and have 100 service hours. Then, a test score of a 29 on the ACT or a 1290 on the SAT must be fulfilled. For the FMS scholarship, only a 3.00 GPA is required, with at least a 26 on the ACT and a 1170 on the SAT. Also, 75 community hours are needed.

In a bill presented by Florida senator Kelli Stargel, these test score requirements could be changed to match national rankings.

“[The plan is to return] what the benchmarks were when Bright Futures was originally established,” Stargel said. “It was getting much easier to reach those percentiles.”

If this new bill is put in place, it states that the minimum SAT score for the FAS scholarship will never drop below the 89th national percentile, and the lowest score needed for the FMS scholarship cannot be under the 75th percentile. Currently, the score requirements for these scholarships are at the 86th national percentile (FAS) and the 70th national percentile (FMS). Changing the required scores to match these levels of national performance would make it tougher for high schoolers to obtain these scholarships.

This bill has not been approved by the Senate yet but, if approved, students in the Class of 2021 and beyond will be affected by these modifications.

“Making a big jump on score levels needed for the scholarships just doesn’t make much sense,” sophomore Nathan Blazer said. “Getting money through these scholarships should not become harder than it already is.”

Since the FAS scholarship has the highest requirements, it comes with the most benefits. This scholarship pays for 100 percent of the students’ tuitions and applicable fees, as well as an additional $300 in both fall and spring semesters for other educational fees.

This bill has not been approved by the Senate yet but, if approved, students in the Class of 2021 and beyond will be affected by these modifications.

“This change would’ve made more sense when the SAT was modified in 2016,” sophomore Joey Pieto said. “Making it harder to obtain a scholarship could hurt many students’ chances to go to college and [it] puts more pressure on those that actually need the scholarships to go to college.”

Photo courtesy of Show Me that I Matter