Florida charter schools grow – and challenge their own status quo

At the annual Florida School Choice Conference and School Choice Summit, attendees got their customary sendoff from Jim Horne, a former state senator, state education commissioner and pioneer of the state’s charter school movement.  

“We were charged to be laboratories of innovation,” he told the audience of school leaders in his keynote speech. “I challenge you to step out of the proverbial box. If you don’t innovate, you will stagnate.” 

So far, charter schools have resisted the forces of stagnation. A report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows charter schools added 83,000 new students during the 2023-24 school year, as enrollment in other public schools shrank. 

This school year, they added thousands more students in Florida. Recent figures from the state Department of Education show statewide charter school enrollment topped 400,000 during the 2024-25 school year. 

Source: State Department of Education

That growth comes two years after state lawmakers passed House Bill 1, which allowed universal education choice scholarship eligibility and created the Personalized Education Program, a flexible scholarship for parents who fully customize their children’s education. 

The legislation unlocked new opportunities for charters to heed Horne’s call to serve as laboratories of innovation by providing a la carte classes and services to scholarship students who did not attend public or private school full time. Need AP chemistry or calculus?  No problem.  

So far, five charter school organizations have partnered with Step Up For Students to offer individual courses to scholarship families, with more in the works. 

“I think it’s a great idea and something that fits right into the charter school realm,” said Karen Seder, director of educational standards at Kid’s Community College, which operates three schools, including one that includes middle school, in Riverview, a southeastern suburb of Tampa. 

The schools expect to begin offering courses soon after leaders decide what might work best. Seder said it might be easier to offer electives first and add core academics after seeing how things work out.  

Though she sees the ability to help part-time students as a win for everyone, she sees the need to protect charter schools’ uniqueness, which comes from their ability to offer strong organizational cultures and coherent, specialized programs, for example, STEM, music or programs for students with learning differences. However, she called the push to maximize options for as many students as possible “the right mindset” for society. 

“Ultimately, when you and I are no longer working and need somebody to take care of us, all these kids are going to be the ones responsible, so it shouldn’t matter to us if they’re homeschool or private school or public school or charter school or wilderness school, she said. “We need to make sure we’re raising kids that have the best education that we can, and our public dollars should be going to all of our kids.” 


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POR Lisa Buie

Lisa Buie is managing editor for NextSteps. The daughter of a public school superintendent, she spent more than a dozen years as a reporter and bureau chief at the Tampa Bay Times before joining Shriners Hospitals for Children — Tampa, where she served for five years as marketing and communications manager. She lives with her husband and their teenage son, who has benefited from education choice.