As the school age population goes down, families leave cities for suburbs, and school choice enrollments increase, traditional public schools face a new problem: What to do with empty school buildings? This may be a symptom of a bigger issue. Continue reading
Category Archives: Facilities
For-Profit Charters: Whose Interest is Being Served?
Lots of money easily available can lead to abuse, and it did–over and over again in Miami. It is so much money that it may be time to follow New York’s lead and ban for-profit education management companies. In this post we look at Academica, Florida’s largest for-profit education management firm.
Its schools are consolidated into at least four non-profit entities that allow Academica to operate legally as a contractor to its own schools. Their 100 schools are organized into the Mater, Somerset, Pinecrest and Doral networks. They also manage several Ben Gamla schools as well as others. Academica operates in five states plus D.C. including Florida, Utah, Texas, Nevada, California.
The Doral and Mater charter governing boards keep appearing in the Miami Dade Inspector General reports. There is a lot of money involved and continued poor governance citations. You can follow the money. Do these schools do more with less?
Florida Education Budget: Better Not Best
It is always nice to put a positive spin on reports that there is more money for education. There is, in fact, more money for education this year than last year.
Education funding, however, has been on a roller coaster for the last several years. Where are we now? Take a ride and see.
Charter Bills Update: Florida 2015 Legislative Session
Charter school bills are moving again, at least in the Florida House. The bills are all beginning to look more alike. The charter school amendm
ent to HB 1145, filed this week, dropped the requirement for districts to share public school capital outlay millage with charters. This is good news for financially strapped public schools.
It added a provision stating that charters have a financial audit that does not reveal any of the financial emergency conditions in 218.503(1) for the most recent year. On the surface, this does not sound like a transparency move.
There are some differences in provisions between the House and Senate relating to charter advisory board conflict of interest rules. The Senate bill 1552 looks stronger than the other bills. They just require board members to be identified and two meetings be held in the district. Advisory boards controlled by their management companies cannot be very independent. Details follow.
More Local Property Taxes to Charters? Say No!
There is a snake in the grass in the Florida legislature. We need to point it out to our local delegations before it bites us. This is the amendment to the House charter bill HB 7037. It was offered by Rep. Erik Fresen who is under investigation by the U.S. DOE for conflict of interest related to his real estate company and the Mater Charter Schools. We need to contact everyone we can; the legislative session is nearly over, and we do not want this to appear on the last day.
Florida League of Women Voters Positions on School Choice
Some of you have been asking about the Florida League positions on school choice. The positions were formally adopted at the convention last year. They will be included in Study and Action when it is updated. The League strongly opposes tax credit scholarships. The Florida League supports Florida’s constitution provision for a uniform, efficient, high quality public school system. While charter schools are legally public schools, the League supports stronger district management and oversight to make them better conform to constitutional requirements. Specific principles and positions are listed below.
Charter School Facilities: Your Money, Their Property
by Sue Legg, Pat Drago, and Ruth Melton
Charter schools are public schools, right? Well yes, but they are owned and managed by private companies. Most of their facilities are privately owned. If they close, the private company retains the buildings.
Charter schools should receive the same amount of money as district schools, right? Seems fair until you think about it.
Let’s think about it. We need to, there is a bill in the legislature.
Florida Senate Education Committee Workshop on Charters
If you want to take the pulse of charter school legislative priorities, watch this video. It is yesterday’s Florida Senate Education Committee workshop on charters. They have a long list of proposed bills to consider, and they are looking for ways to combine bills in order to move forward.
The two most comprehensive bills were from Senator Montford and Senator Legg. Continue reading
Senate Appropriations Hearing: Did They Listen?
You may not have watched the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this week. It was about charter school management reform. Or was it? The speakers were from the charter sector and from school districts.
It was not until the last minute of a two hour session that you found out what really was at stake. A major battle is forming.
New Mexico Proposes Better Charter Management
The New Mexico legislation has strong provisions relating to the charter school management and facilities. SB 236 Beffort strengthens these provisions. The proposed bill is instructive because it highlights corrective measures to improve the regulations and oversight of charter facilities and conflict of interest.
These proposals can inform the regulations in other states.