Jacob Ogles
The Senate has agreed to provide $6 million in the state budget for Schools of Hope to open near failing public schools.
The latest Senate offer on PreK-12 funding includes the funding that the House proposed in its own budget plans last week.
That means millions more will go to a long-controversial plan to fund privately run charter schools in direct competition with struggling traditional ones.
Schools for Hope were initially approved by state lawmakers in 2017, a priority of then-Speaker Richard Corcoran, who went on to become Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Education Commissioner and now serves as President of New College of Florida.
The plan to fund the ideas surfaced in budget talks between the House and Senate despite a policy bill about Schools of Hope failing to come up for approval during the scheduled Legislative Session.
The House Education & Employment Committee and the House Education Administration Subcommittee, during the regular Legislative Session, put forward a Committee bill (HB 1115) that would have required surtax revenue shared with school districts to be redirected to charter schools, including Schools of Hope.
The bill passed in the House on an 84-19 vote, with only Democratic votes against it. However, the Senate declined to take up the bill as part of an education package that included the controversial language. It passed its version unanimously and kicked it back to the House, which then again had a party-line vote to put the original language, including the Schools of Hope, back in place.
But as a failure to reach a budget deal, the bill was withdrawn from consideration on May 3 and died with all policy bills at the scheduled end of Session.
Since then, budget talks forced lawmakers into an extended Session where few policy bills were allowed to be considered. However, the funding for the schools has now been included in both chambers’ financial plans.
The House and Senate both proposed funding the program with non-recurring general revenue.
