Florida’s charter schools would have financial incentives to serve low-income and special needs students, and be barred from using state facilities funding for “private enrichment,” under a proposal approved this week by a state Senate panel.
The Senate’s plan, which won praise on both sides of the aisle, was unveiled Thursday after the state House of Representatives spent days debating school construction and charter school funding.
The proposal (starting on page 196) wouldn’t necessarily steer more money to charter schools, or change the rules deciding which schools qualify for facilities funding. But it would change the formula for parceling out the money, and place new restrictions on charters that lease private land.
Right now, charter school capital outlay funding is distributed based on factors like when schools opened and whether they qualified for funding in the past.
The Senate has proposed scrapping that formula. Under its plan, all schools that qualify for capital outlay (right now, that’s about 535 of the state’s more than 650 charters) would receive a base amount of facilities funding.
They would receive extra funding if more than 75 percent of their students qualified for free and reduced-priced lunches, or if more than 25 percent of their students qualified for special education services. Those that met both standards would receive double weight.
The goal is to prioritize funding for charters that serve students with the greatest needs, Senate Education Appropriations Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, said while explaining the plan.
The proposal would also bar charters from leasing buildings from private groups if the landlord were affiliated in any way with the people running the school.
Gaetz said this would prevent what he called “basically a real estate scheme,” in which developers tied to charter school companies build facilities, and the school then leases the building from that group. (These arrangements were the subject of a hard-hitting Miami Herald investigation a few years ago.)
Sen. John Legg, R-Lutz, suggested adding a requirement that charter schools receiving capital outlay funding publish ten-year plans for how they will use the money. Gaetz and Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, both said they’d support that concept.
The Senate has not yet proposed a funding amount for charter school facilities, or addressed a plan by the House that would allow charters to share capital outlay funding raised by school district property taxes.
Gaetz said the funding set aside for charter school facilities, which has declined in recent years, would be resolved in high-level budget talks between House and Senate leaders.
