William Mattox: Turning schools into airport terminals (sort of)

Adorable little girl alone in the airport. Lost toddler looking for parents. Travelling with small kids

As K-12 student populations decline around the country, many officials are trying to figure out what to do with woefully underutilized public school buildings — like the one in Chicago that has 27 students in a facility meant to serve 900.

Surprisingly, some Florida school districts are facing this same challenge, despite our state’s overall population growth.

And there’s no shortage of opinions about what Florida ought to do with surplus school space.

Some folks in Broward County want to demolish their surplus school buildings and re-purpose the land as cemeteries. Many families in Duval County want their school district to keep their (underutilized) schools open – even if the cost-per-student can’t be justified. Several state legislators have proposed converting unused school buildings into affordable housing complexes for first responders, veterans, and others.

Here at The James Madison Institute, we think surplus school buildings ought to be turned into airport terminals and turnpike rest areas.

Well, sort of.

As Florida travelers know well, it is quite common to find private-sector vendors housed in publicly owned airport terminals and turnpike service plazas: Burger King. Hudson News. Starbucks. Souvenir shops. Chick-fil-A. And so on.

What does this have to do with surplus school buildings? A lot.

You see, in Florida, many of our public school buildings are underutilized because a growing number of families are opting to send their children to private schools instead. In fact, the number of Florida students enrolled in private or home schools now exceeds the entire K-12 student population in 15 different states.

The burgeoning growth in private schooling means that many education entrepreneurs are facing significant learning space challenges – especially since local zoning, fire, and building use regulations often put ridiculous obstacles in their way. “Getting zoning approval for a new school in Southern Florida typically takes 12-18+ months of reviews and hearings, and costs over $150,000 in legal, architect, and study fees,” reports a 2025 study by Teach Florida. “Most schools simply can’t afford to wait this much time or spend this much extra money to get started.”

Thankfully, Rep. Jennifer Canady is leading an effort to remove many of these regulatory barriers to new schools. While her colleagues certainly ought to get behind the future House Speaker’s initiative, they also ought to make surplus public school buildings part of the solution. Specifically, they ought to give private and charter schools first dibs on buying or leasing available public school space — even if the eventual outcome is a shared space arrangement where multiple education providers operate under the same roof.

Housing multiple education providers under the same roof would be a win-win-win. It’d be good for parents who want their children to be educated close to home (but don’t necessarily want them to enroll full-time at a public school). It’d be good for private education providers who need space. And it’d be good for public schools interested in boosting their budgets by offering fee-per-course options to families who use flex-spend scholarships.

Housing multiple education providers under the same roof would no doubt please Andrew Yang, whose 2020 presidential campaign called for turning abandoned shopping malls into education learning centers. (Another good idea!)

And selling or leasing learning space to private schools makes good practical sense, given that these spaces were built with children in mind – and typically have safety features and other amenities (child-sized toilets!) that are often difficult to retrofit.

To be sure, making surplus school space available to private educators is not the only thing that needs to happen – we still need those local zoning pre-emptions! – but it would be one of the easiest ways for policymakers to help address the space needs of education entrepreneurs.

And even though it may seem peculiar at first, housing a private enterprise in a publicly owned building isn’t a novel idea. We’ve seen it many times before, on trips through airport terminals and turnpike rest areas.

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William Mattox is the senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.