TALHASSEE – Florida lawmakers passed measures Monday to help expand charter schools known as the “School of Hope.”
The School of Hope proposal appeared to have died before the May 2nd schedule for this year’s legislative meeting, but it has resurfaced as part of a bill related to the new state budget. Lawmakers passed the 2025-2026 budget late Monday after weeks of negotiations.
Charter schools are public schools run by private operators. In 2017, lawmakers created the Schools of Hope program to serve local children in traditional public schools, “permanently low” traditional public schools.
Some of the bills passed Monday could change the standard for determining whether traditional public schools perform sustainably low performance, increasing the number of designations received, which will open the doors of more schools of hope.
This designation will begin to apply to traditional public schools in the lower 10% of schools across the state for at least two of the past three years, for student performance in third-grade standardized English arts or fourth-grade mathematics exams.
The bill also gives schools that wish to be the right to use vacant school facilities, if space is available, or who wish to “work” with other schools.
During discussions on Monday night, House Building sponsored by House Bill, Mulicka, a Republican at Fort Myers, who chairs the budget subcommittee from kindergarten, repeatedly emphasized that charter schools are public schools.
“These specialized charter schools are coming in and transforming communities, changing children’s lives, changing metrics,” she said. “They are working.”
However, some Democrats have denounced the bill, saying it would harm traditional public schools. For example, D-Orlando’s Rep. Anna Eskamani said lawmakers are changing the definition of permanently low public schools “to occupy more schools for privatization.”
“Instead of creating these schemes that separate funds from traditional public schools, why not fund traditional public schools?” said Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton.
The Republican-controlled House voted 80-24 to pass the bill (SB 2510) after the Senate approved it 25-9 votes (SB 2510). I’m going to go to Governor Ron DeSantis.
Lawmakers were scheduled to close the legislative meeting on May 2, but had to extend it for more than six weeks to reach an agreement on the budget and related invoices. Before the scheduled end, they took other steps to strengthen the charter school.
As an example, lawmakers passed a bill (HB 443) that allowed charter schools to have stricter codes of conduct than traditional public schools and could not exceed the capacity of the facility, but would increase registrations more than initially approved. Desantis signed the bill on May 30th.
In April, the House of Representatives passed a bill that included changing schools of hope, but the measure was not approved by the Senate. The changes were included in the broader education bill passed Monday.
This spring, a house staff analysis said Florida had approved seven hopeful operators who ran 12 schools. He said that in the 2023-2024 academic year, 51 traditional public schools were considered to have a sustained low performance.
More broadly, charter schools that are not bound by the same regulations as traditional public schools have grown dramatically over the years.
For example, data posted on the Florida Department of Education website shows that 382,367 students were enrolled in charter schools during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Jim Sanders, Florida news service
