Jesse Scheckner
After ample debate over its merits and issues across three committee stops, legislation making it significantly easier for parents to convert public schools into charter schools passed on the Senate floor with zero discussion.
Senators voted 30-7 for the bill (SB 140), which would change the standard by which Florida municipalities can turn over a public school’s facilities and operations to a private education company.
SB 140, which still needs to pass in the House, would modify state statutes to remove district School Boards, principals, teachers and school advisory councils from being able to apply for a conversion charter school. It would also delete a requirement that at least half of the teachers employed at a given school approve the conversion.
That decision would instead fall solely to parents with children currently enrolled at the school, and only a majority of them would have to support the change.
The bill would also allow municipalities to apply to convert a public school into a job engine charter school — a privately run public school with curricula designed to meet local employment and economic development needs — if the existing school received a state-set grade below “A” for five consecutive years.
Florida Statutes provide that “A” schools are making excellent progress, “B” schools are making above-average progress, “C” schools are making average progress, and “D” and “F” schools are falling behind. And according to the Florida Education Association, which opposes SB 140, public schools that serve high-poverty communities are rated one grade higher, on average, than their charter counterparts.
In its final committee stop last week, the bill’s sponsor, Pensacola Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, argued that despite all the charter-focused changes, there is “nothing in the bill that favors charter schools.”
“There’s nothing in the bill that requires school districts to turn over any facilities to charter schools,” he said. “And consequently, I believe that this is a bill that gives local municipalities who are looking for a way to make education a reason why they would be able to attract job producers a tool that would be valuable in their toolbox.”
Several of his Democratic colleagues disagreed with Gaetz’s assessment of the bill, its perceived benefits and the idea that converting a public school into a privately operated one shouldn’t include all stakeholders, not just parents.
Sen. Lori Berman of Boynton Beach said that under the bill’s language, a minority of parents with a possibly fleeting interest in a given school would be able to affect its long-term operation.
“We don’t even get to the point of (whether) parents vote for more than one (child), but let’s say you have 1,000 parents in the school. Only 500 of them need to vote to say they’d like to have a vote, and of that only 251 have to vote to agree to the conversion,” she said. “So, basically you could have 25% of the parents in the school changing the entire nature of the school to a charter school.”
Most public testimony about SB 140 and its House twin (HB 123) by Pensacola Republican Rep. Alex Andrade during the committee process has been against changing the charter conversion threshold.
Dozens of people spoke against the legislation, which the Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards, Orange County Public Schools, SPLC and Engage Miami also oppose.
Supporters include the Florida Citizens Alliance, Americans for Prosperity and Foundation for Florida’s Future.
Teacher Tessa Barber, an organizing fellow with United Faculty of Florida, called SB 140 an attack on worker autonomy, students and the “world-class education in the state of Florida.”
“This bill creates undue, unnecessary interference in the functioning of our public schools,” she said. “Chartering opens doors for corruption by removing oversight into the organizations and providers employed by the charter school, meaning contractors are able to rake in profits without consideration for the students’ well-being on the taxpayer dime.”
Karen Mazzola of the Florida PTA said that while the legislation 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.”
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?’”
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.
SB 140, which would go into effect July 1, is an updated version of legislation Andrade unsuccessfully carried last year with Stuart Republican Sen. Gayle Harrell that also aimed to change who could vote for a charter conversion. 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 expedite 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.
All Senate Republicans present for Thursday’s floor vote voted “yes” for SB 140. Berman voted “no” alongside fellow Democratic Sens. Kristen Arrington, Tracie Davis, Shevrin Jones, Rosalind Osgood, Jason Pizzo and Carlos Guillermo Smith.
Three Democrats — Sens. Mack Bernard, Tina Scott Polsky and Barbara Sharief — voted for the measure.
SB 140 will now go to the House, where it will be taken up alongside HB 123 on the chamber floor.
