Florida is implementing a whole new way for charter schools to hoover up taxpayer dollars.
Schools of Hope started out in 2017 (the bill originally called them "Schools of Success" but someone must have decided against overpromising). The idea was the ultimate in targeting struggling public schools; the idea is that when you find a school that is struggling, you don't give them additional resources or support, but instead pay some charter school to come into the neighborhood.
The scheme was cooked up by then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran and then-Rep. Manny Diaz, two long-time opponents of public education in Florida. And they got some help-- according to Gary Fineout, an AP reporter who has covered many Florida crazy-pants education stories:
Rep. Michael Bileca, a Miami Republican and chairman of the House Education Committee, said legislators met with charter school operators and asked what it would take for them to set up schools in the neighborhoods now served by traditional public schools. He said one answer was that they needed help paying for new buildings to house the school.Emphasis mine-- we'll come back to that. Cathy Boehme of the Florida Education Association pointed out the obvious:
You are saying funding matters. You're saying good strategies matter. And then you turn around and keep those strategies from schools that you could save from these turnaround options.
Yup. "We've found schools that need help," said the legislature. "Let's give that help to someone else!"
However, Schools of Hope did not take off. Florida was hoping to attract national charter chain action, but it turns out that national charter chains understand that in neighborhoods where public schools struggle, charter schools will also struggle (see also: sad story of Tennessee's Achievement School District). The League of Women Voters attributes the program's struggles to four factors:
- Facility costs remained prohibitive even with 25% loan caps and state subsidies
- Building schools from scratch takes years of planning, approval, and construction
- Local opposition emerged in some communities skeptical of outside operators
- Easier markets existed elsewhere for charter operators seeking expansion
The legislature, more interested in nursing the charter industry than the public school system, tried modifying the law. They expanded the range of public schools that could trigger Schools of Hope, both in terms of school achievement and location. They threw more money at the program.
It still wasn't enough.
So this year, the Florida State Board of Education just went ahead and changed the rules.
Remember that problem with getting new buildings up and running. Fixed! Colocation! Now districts must provide "underused, vacant, or surplus" facilities to SOH charters. No rent, no lease, no cost, and districts can't refuse. However, the district must provide building maintenance, custodial services, food service, and transportation. And as long as the facilities are "underused," the district has no say.
"Underused" is a big problem here. There's an administrative rule in the state code that defines "fully used" roughly as "no unused student seats," but that's not much help at all. Intermittent or irregular use? And there's a whole world of other programs that serve students in schools. As Education Matters in Manatee points out
[P]erhaps on an Excel spreadsheet (page 2 of 4 is shown below), a classroom housing six or seven students, one teacher, and several aides may appear to be “underutilized” - but it isn’t. It is in fact providing essential services to some of the most vulnerable citizens of our county.
Imagine you and some neighbors have a regular car pool to work. You share gas expenses, even pool money for a morning cup of coffee. Then one day another neighbor says, "I see you've got a spare seat in the car. I'm going to sit in it and you're going to drive me to work." The seat's not really empty, you reply-- most days we put the stuff we take to work there, and on Tuesdays we take Pat's mom to the doctor. "Don't care," says the neighbor. "You have to take me." Will you chip in for gas money? "No way," says the neighbor. "Also, you're going to buy me donuts and coffee every morning."
If this sounds like a sweet deal for charter operators, well, they agree. Dozens of charter operators have informed a public district that they want the district to fork over the space (WFTV9 pegs the number at 60, but that total appears to be a moving target-- Miami Times Online reports almost 700 "Give us your space" letters going out to school districts).
And now that the rules have changed--Schools of Hope no longer target just low-performing schools, but any school with mysterious "underused" space, many of the schools that are being targeted are A and B rated schools, which is swell for charters, because that's the market they want to tap anyway. Schools of Hope were launched with all sorts of florid grandstanding ("No longer will we rob children of dignity and hope. Now every single child will be afforded an opportunity of a world class education.," said Corcoran in 2017). Now charter operators can skip right past those challenging schools and head for the more profitable neighborhoods. Once again, school choice is really school's choice.
Sure enough, here comes Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy to cash in on Schools of Hope. Success has perfected the art of creaming families that will fit in-- none of this "every single child will be afforded an opportunity" baloney for Eva. Backed by $50 million from Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, she's looking to set up shop in Miami-Dade, a move that would have been expensive before the state figured out how to give her facility space (and food service and transportation) for free. In return she gets to pick and choose the most agreeable students from a market that didn't include any low-performing schools under the original definition.
SOH present an assortment of problems on the ground--what, for instance, happens in a building where the public school staff and the charter school hours don't match up? Cafeteria time? Can schedules be worked out to manage students passing and mingling in the halls?
And what the heck happens if the public school enrollment grows and they need some of the space back? The law doesn't appear to have any clue (perhaps because Florida legislators are focused on gutting public schools, not building them.
A Success rep says this will be great for the public school because the co-located school will get increased state aid because of increased head count in the building. I wouldn't bet on it. Meanwhile, the charter gets to double dip-- the state hands over taxpayer dollars so that the charter can operate a school, but at the same time, the public school has to carry some of the costs of operating the charter school.
And somehow, the party of small government is once again stomping on local control. The members of the community have no say, no voice, in whether or not the charter becomes a squatter in their public school building, and no say in how the charter operates inside that taxpayer-owned building.
What do they get? Hard to say. The results of Schools of Hope are, so far, not particularly amazing and in many cases have been outstripped by public schools that work with the same demographics. SOH charters are not subject to the same sorts of penalties for low performance that public schools suffer. No School of Hope operators have lost their designation because of their low academic performance. But beyond that, much is mysterious because Florida does not collect information about students at SOH charters-- not which groups are represented nor which attendance zones they came from. You would think that a program supposedly aimed at rescuing poor high-risk students would collect data about whether or not those students were being rescued, but no.
If you're in Florida and want more information, I recommend the website schoolsofnope.org and the recent report from the League of Women Voters. If you aren't in Florida, watch for this manner of picking taxpayer pockets in your state.
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