Scott approves public school choice expansion

Florida students will soon be able to cross school zones and district lines under legislation approved today by Gov. Rick Scott.

HB 7029 requires school districts to allow students to transfer to any public school that has room — including magnet and charter schools in neighboring districts — by the 2017-18 school year.

The change has drawn the interest of parents looking for options inside the public school system since it was first proposed last year. But it drew logistical concerns from some school districts, which worried about overhauling their enrollment procedures and sharing local tax revenue.

This week, the Orlando Sentinel reported some districts plan to band together to address those issues.

The 13 districts in the Central Florida School Boards Coalition will work together to create uniform ways of determining if schools have room for transfer students and then the transfer procedures, said Walt Griffin, superintendent of the Seminole County school district, during the coalition’s meeting this morning.

“I want to just be in front it,” Griffin said later. “So when parents do start asking for transfers, we’re all on the same page.”

Seminole has already had a few inquiries, he added.

Central Florida educators are worried about the rule, fearful transfers from one county’s school district to another would dilute the value of local taxes, upend school construction plans and complicate efforts to accommodate growth.

In an interview last month, Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, who sponsored the public school choice provisions for two years in the House, said that while low-income parents might need help overcoming transportation and other obstacles to school choice, the measure gives them new avenues to move their children better schools.

“We can lift barriers so that those folks have the opportunity to do what is best for their children,” he said.

Among other things, the wide-ranging, 160-page law will also bar charter schools from dismissing students for poor academic performance, change the state facilities funding formula to encourage charters to serve low-income and special-needs students, and create new safeguards designed to stop school construction cost overruns.

Scott today also signed a measure that gives principals at academically struggling public schools in Broward, Duval, Jefferson, Madison, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Seminole counties a chance to receive charter-like autonomy to turn their schools around.