By Ron Matus and Julisse Levy
HUDSON, Fla. – In 2022, Joel Hernandez and his wife, Norma Torres, had to find a new school for their then-9-year-old daughter, Fabiola. In their part of Puerto Rico, they felt their options were, at best, limited.
Fabiola is on the autism spectrum. Over the years, her parents visited and/or researched every public and private school in the area that served students with special needs. It was not a pretty picture.
In some, up to 30 students with vastly different learning and support needs were crammed together in the same classrooms. In one, students with a wide range of ages and special needs were grouped in a room that doubled as storage for desks, tables, and other equipment. Yet another was so lacking in security that Hernandez walked from the entrance to the classroom without anybody asking who he was or what he was doing.
In the end, the couple settled on a school that looked good on paper. But it turned out to be a bust, too. It never delivered on promises of regular speech and occupational therapy.
Fighting for Fabiola left the couple drained. Their daughter needed every opportunity to gain skills that would allow her to live as independently as possible as an adult, and it wasn’t happening.
“We spent nights crying,” Hernandez said. “We looked at each other every day and said, ‘What are we going to do?’ “
As things grew desperate, the couple began to consider moving to the states for better educational opportunities, and more specifically, to Florida, where they had enjoyed time on vacation. When they began researching schools in the Sunshine State that served students with autism, one immediately jumped out.
It had Hope in its name.
'I knew it was meant to be'
Hope Ranch Learning Academy is a K-12 school with 250 students an hour north of Tampa.
From the school website, the couple could see a campus awash in moss-draped oaks. To them, it looked calming. The school featured equine therapy, which Fabiola experienced in Puerto Rico and loved. It was also a Christian school, which was very important to the family.
Incredibly, Hernandez and Torres also saw a familiar face on the website, a girl who had been Fabiola’s friend years prior.
“God intervened,” Hernandez said. “I knew it was meant to be.”
The couple contacted the girl’s family, who referred them to a school administrator. The woman told them that Hope Ranch had a long waitlist — it’s now more than 80 students — and they had to be Florida residents to get on it. She asked, “Do you really want to move because of the school?”
“That was the a-ha moment,” Hernandez said. “We said, ‘In Puerto Rico, we have nothing for our daughter. We have to move.’”
Private school boom, scholarships, draw families
Families are moving to Florida because of its schools and school choice.
It’s not just the abundance of state choice scholarships, which average $8,000 or $10,000 each and are now available to every family. It’s the entire, choice-driven system. Florida’s education landscape is becoming more diverse and dynamic by the day, as the families of 500,000 students using scholarships (and growing) shape it with their preferences.
In the past 10 years alone, the number of private schools in Florida has grown by a third. That’s a net gain of more than 700 private schools, which is more than 39 states each have, period. And what’s more impressive than the number is the variety.
Schools like Hope Ranch, which was a semi-finalist for the Yass Prize in education innovation, are not anomalies. High-quality schools serving students with special needs have emerged in every corner of the state, and some are now drawing families from out of state. At the North Florida School of Special Education, for example, the families of 24 students moved from out of state, including this family from Maryland.
At Hope Ranch, a half-dozen families have even moved from other countries or Puerto Rico.
Equine therapy and transition program set Hope Ranch apart
In Puerto Rico, Hernandez taught marketing at a college and sold beauty supplies. Torres worked as a nail technician. Moving to the States obviously would mean leaving friends and family and starting over with new jobs, a new house, everything. But Fabiola’s future depended on it.
In November 2023, the family and their three dogs moved into their new home, 12 miles from Hope.
Since Fabiola couldn’t attend the private school right away, her parents enrolled her in the neighborhood public school. It turned out to be excellent. One teacher in particular paid extra attention to Fabiola and made sure she got the help she needed, including a full-time, 1-on-1 assistant.
“There’s always an angel over Fabiola,” Hernandez said.
Hope Ranch, though, remained ideal. Besides the equine therapy program, the school operates a highly regarded transition program that prepares students for independent living as adults. In December, the Yass Prize awarded Hope founders Jose and Ampy Suarez an alumni grant, so they could build a separate high school campus and expand the transition program.
Hernandez periodically checked in with Hope to see how much the waitlist was shrinking. Finally, in June 2025, the administrators invited the family to the school so they could share the good news in person.
Fabiola was in.
Family credits school choice scholarship for making Hope Ranch affordable
Classes started in August. Just a few months later, Hernandez said the change in Fabiola has been “astronomical.”
Fabiola smiles more. She’s happy when she wakes up. She’s happy on the way to school.
She’s more independent, confident, communicative. She doesn’t cover her face as much as she used to. She tries to verbalize more. She makes eye contact more often.
“She wants to play with other children now,” Torres said. “She feels included. They grab her hand and say, ‘Come with us.’ “
Last month, Fabiola and the other Hope Ranch students performed a stage version of “The Little Drummer Boy” for students at a nearby high school. Fabiola was on stage for an hour.
“I know she has to progress more,” Hernandez said, “but we feel very good.”
None of this would have been possible without Florida’s choice scholarship, he said. The family couldn’t afford Hope Ranch without it.
The school told the family about the scholarship. But Hernandez couldn’t believe how easy it was to get.
In Puerto Rico, he and Torres were accustomed to filing all kinds of education requests on Fabiola’s behalf and waiting long stretches for answers. With the scholarship, they got the award notice within 24 hours of applying. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” Hernandez joked.
“We had this in our dreams, but we didn’t know it could come true. Florida and Hope were a dream come true,” Hernandez said as he started to cry.
“I’m sorry I have to cry, but it’s very emotional,” he continued. “In Puerto Rico, all we had were problems” with Fabiola’s education. “Here we have solutions.”
Some quotes in this story were translated from Spanish to English with the assistance of Julisse Levy, director, head of business Initiatives, Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, at Step Up For Students.