Florida will start funding charter school facilities based on the characteristics of the students they serve.
And under new rules approved today by the state Board of Education, charters will have to clear a higher academic bar to qualify.
A new state law requires the state to distribute more capital funding to charter schools where at least 25 percent of students have special needs, or at least 75 percent qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch.
The state rule created in response to that law also disqualifies charter schools from receiving state capital funding if they’ve received consecutive D’s under the state accountability system. The previous rule only disqualified charter schools rated F.
At the state board’s meeting in Tampa, that change received pushback from schools that could lose funding as a result.
Right now, more than 400 of the state’s roughly 650 charter schools qualify for a share of $75 million set aside for facilities funding. The state is still updating its numbers to distribute funding under the new rule.
Adam Miller, the director of the state’s school choice office, told the board that preliminary calculations show 142 charter schools could receive extra funding because more than three-quarters of their students are economically disadvantaged. Of those higher-poverty schools, Miller said current projections show seven could lose funding under the stricter academic requirements.
“The vast majority of them are actually performing at a higher level,” he said.
One of the high-poverty schools with two consecutive D’s is the Florida City-based Miami Community Charter School. Mark Gotz, the president of the School Development Group, which helped finance the school, told the state board a school that previously qualified for state capital funding “should not be handicapped because their student body does not take tests well.”
State Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, who has been a persistent critic of charter schools in Tallahassee, went to bat for the school. In a letter to the board dated Friday, he noted that he sits on the Legislature’s Joint Administrative Procedures Committee, which oversees executive branch rulemaking. The change, he wrote, “would be counter-productive to providing a better education in needy areas through school choice.”
Miller, however, noted the law requires the state to distribute facilities funding to charter schools with “satisfactory” academic performance. He said the new law sending more money to high-poverty schools places a greater onus on the state to make sure it distributes scarce funding to schools with strong student achievement.
“If we are focusing more resources on schools that are going into low-income areas, we need to make sure that those are good-quality schools and serving those children well,” he said.
Florida charter schools rely on annual appropriations by the Legislature for facilities funding, since most school districts do not share local property tax revenue with them.
In a statement, the Florida Charter School Alliance said it plans to start a “collaborative dialogue” with lawmakers about which schools qualify for facilities funding.
