Florida’s charter schools could get more funding if they serve larger numbers of low-income and special-needs students, under a sweeping education bill approved on the final day of the state’s legislative session and now headed to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk.
The final revisions to HB 7029, which cleared both chambers Friday with bipartisan support, would not steer new money to charter school construction or add a ban on “personal enrichment” from charter school facilities.
But it would change the way capital funding is distributed.
Charter schools could receive 25 percent more facilities funding if three-quarters or more of their students qualify for federal lunch subsidies or at least one-quarter of their students have special needs. Schools that meet both requirements would receive 50 percent more funding.
In short, charter schools would have a stronger financial incentive to serve disadvantaged students.
Charters could also start receiving state capital outlay funding after two years of operation instead of the current three.
One of the most significant changes in the wide-ranging legislation would affect charter and traditional public schools alike, creating statewide open enrollment and making it easier for parents to send their children across district lines, starting in the 2017-18 school year. The bill includes numerous other education policy changes, from preschool to higher education.
It would also require would-be charter operators to submit more details on their track records when they apply to school boards, and bar charters from kicking students out for poor academic performance.
State Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallhassee, who also heads the state district superintendents association, said those changes would add accountability for charters. As a result, he said, “If you look at the totality of this bill, it’s a good bill.”
Other Democrats, however, criticized the measure, bemoaning a ban on private enrichment from charter school facilities had been removed. Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg, cited an Associated Press investigation of charter schools that received state facilities funding and later closed. Many charters, he argued, are “bringing nothing new to the game except plundering the public treasury.”
The Senate-crafted “values statement” on charter school facilities would have barred charters from leasing private property owned by their affiliates.
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who helped draw up the provision, said he’d heard concerns it could snare charter school founders who plowed some of their own money into privately owned facilities. They may have had no choice, he said, in part because most charters lack access to public facilities or up-front capital funding.
“There are circumstances, I am told, in charter schools where people have had to dig into their own pockets” to pay for buildings, he said, and lawmakers decided it might not be fair to penalize those operators. In the 20 years since Florida created its first charter schools, he added, “The airplane has had to be built in flight.”
Lawmakers set next year’s facilities funding for the state’s more than 650 charter schools at $75 million, an increase over last year but less than they received in 2013. Right now, the funding is divided among more than 500 schools.
