Bill to ease charter school conversions, block public school districts from buying land clears first House hurdle

Alex Andrade takes a pass on the Senate.

Legislation with the potential to significantly change Florida’s educational landscape has cleared its first House hurdle after its sponsor heard concerns about its potentially negative effects.

The Education Administration Subcommittee voted 13-5 on party lines to advance the bill (HB 123), which would exclude School Boards, teachers and school administrators from votes over whether to convert public schools into charter schools.

That decision would fall instead to parents with children enrolled at the school in question, whom current statutes already give a vote. Approving a charter conversion would require a 50% vote by parents, the same threshold given to teachers now.

Pensacola Republican Rep. Alex Andrade, the bill’s sponsor, said parents — not elected officials or unelected educators — are “the most reliable metric for a school’s performance.”

“Who cares more about that child than that child’s parents?” he said.

Local governments would still have some say. Andrade’s measure would create a new provision under which cities could — but wouldn’t have to — seek a charter school conversion for any public school that has received a grade below an “A” from the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) for five consecutive years.

The bill would also restrain school districts. It would require School Boards that want to buy or acquire real estate property to submit a five-year plan for it at a public meeting.

More notably, if a school district has seen its enrollment decline over the preceding five years, it would be prohibited from buying more property and must instead sell land or buildings the State Board of Education deems surplus.

That property would then have to be given priority for conversion to a charter school; affordable housing for teachers, first responders and military personnel; or for local recreational facilities.

“This bill is fiscally responsible,” Andrade said. “It focuses on a real-world issue that we’ve seen where school districts with a declining population and no need for surplus property are holding onto property because they’re afraid of more competition.”

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed concerns with the standards Andrade’s bill uses.

Hollywood Democratic Rep. Marie Woodson and Tampa Rep. Susan Valdés, a former School Board member who in December switched her party affiliation to Republican, noted that a “B” rating still denotes a good school.

Woodson cited a July 2024 press release in which FDOE lumped “A” and “B” graded schools together. Valdés, who voted “yes” on the bill, said blocking school districts from buying land would prevent them from cost-effectively planning for their future, since property values are likely to continue rising.

Democratic Rep. Wallace Aristide, a longtime educator from Miami, said teachers at conversion-targeted schools could see their accrued retirement funds, vacation days and sick leave evaporate.

Rep. Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat who works in higher education, called the measure “another way to cause a slow death to our public education system” and decried the bill’s removal of teachers from the voting process.

“Schools work best when parents and teachers work together,” she said. “If we pass this bill, in a few years we’ll be coming back having to repeal and fix it.”

Miami Beach Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe disagreed and ascribed his Democratic colleagues’ concerns to “partisan-controlled narratives” and their failure to thoroughly read the legislation.

Teachers would still be participants in the process, Basabe said, regardless of whether they have an actual vote, since it’s their work — through the school’s grade — that would allow for charter conversions.

“Their work is always represented, and if it’s not where it needs to be, we need to consider there are great employees and underperforming employees,” he said. “Making our public schools more accountable for the overpaid bureaucracy while, mind you, I think our teachers are underpaid … is an opportunity.”

As of February 2024, Florida had 23 conversion charter schools, accounting for about 3.2% of the state’s 726 charter schools. Most were previously low-performing public schools that parents and teachers agreed to convert.

HB 123, which would go into effect July 1, is an updated version of legislation Andrade unsuccessfully carried last year that also aimed to change who could vote for a charter conversion and limit school district land purchases. It also comes less than a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping education package (HB 1285) that among other things created a route to speed up the conversion of failing traditional public schools — that receive two straight “D” or “F” grades — into charter schools.

Florida’s school vouchers program, which lawmakers expanded in 2023, is projected to divert nearly $4 billion this year from public education to provide students financial assistance for school costs, including private school tuition.

Representatives from several government and educational advocacy groups signaled support and opposition to HB 123. Proponents included the Florida Citizens Alliance, Americans for Prosperity and the Foundation for Florida’s Future.

Detractors included the Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards, the Florida Education Association and Orange County Public Schools.

Karen Mazzola of the Florida PTA said that while Andrade’s bill has no listed fiscal impact, it will nevertheless come at a potentially large cost to community stakeholders whom the measure aims to exclude.

“Schools affect our property value, affect why we want to live in a certain area of town,” she said. ‘Those people need to be part of this decision.”

She said School Boards today buy property based on community growth and future needs, and limiting their ability to do that will cause problems. There are other unconsidered expenses, from the cost of redistricting when a school is converted to potential increases in busing needs that could put added strain on Florida’s less well-to-do areas.

And what happens if the new charter school doesn’t perform any better — or does worse — than the public school it replaced?

“There’s nothing in this bill,” she said, ‘that says, ‘How do we revert back?’”

HB 123 will next go to the PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee, after which it has one more stop at the Education and Employment Committee before reaching a House floor vote.

Its Senate analog (SB 140) Pensacola Republican Don Gaetz awaits a hearing at the first of three committees to which it was referred.