Andrew Powell
A measure passed by the Florida House on Friday, aiming to have underutilized public schools reach full capacity, lost steam during the final hours of the Florida Regular Session and stalled.
Tampa Republican Rep. Susan Valdés sponsored the measure (HB 1115), which trumped its House companion bill (SB 1702) sponsored by Zephyrhills Republican Sen. Danny Burgess.
The bill was returned to the House after the Senate adopted an amendment. It was due to go back to the Senate after another amendment was approved by a vote of 84-19 in the House, but ultimately the legislation ran out of time.
Miami Republican Rep. Demi Busatta introduced the amendment and explained that the House amendment replaced the Senate amendment in its entirety with language from HB 1267 — another bill sponsored by Busatta — that included Schools of Hope and course transparency.
The bill would have allowed a public school to essentially share its facilities if a significant portion is not being used. This could have been with another entity, such as Schools of Hope. Public schools would also have been able to share the cost of upkeep and claim state funding from students using the borrowed space.
During the amendment’s debate, Weston Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman raised concerns that transportation funding for students attending Schools of Hope located within a public school outside of their opportunity zone was not included.
“This is really terrible,” Bartleman said. “It creates an uneven playing field. You’re going to go into high-performing schools and take them under the premise ‘they’re supposed to help these low-performing kids’ who can’t even get there, which isn’t going to happen. So, it’s just a way to take over the schools.”
Miami Democratic Rep. Ashley Gantt said that although she had previously disagreed with Busatta, she understood the intent and noted that the changes in the bill no longer aligned with that.
“I disagreed with you, Rep. Busatta, about the School of Hope initially, right, but I understood your intent, 100%,” Gantt said. “But these amendments do not speak to the representations that you initially made, because I agreed with that rationale. These new amendments, with these new provisions, do not align with the previous representations.”
Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani said legislation enacted over the past years undermines traditional public schools.
“We keep taking away whatever competitive advantage that traditional public schools had, for a bias towards privatization,” Eskamani said.
Delray Beach Democratic Rep. Kelly Skidmore agreed with Eskamani about the impacts of past legislation and said the policies over the past years have created the issue that public schools are currently facing.
“We have the very distinct ‘honor’ of being 50th in the country for teacher pay,” Skidmore said. “We give our taxpayer dollars to private schools and religious schools. We create an unfair playing field between traditional public schools, charter schools, and other educational institutions.”
