Charter systems have targeted 450 public schools in Florida under a new privatization law

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Photo credit: Frank McGady

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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Operators of charter schools have signaled plans to take rent-free space in at least 450 public schools across Florida, using a new school-privatization law that Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature enacted earlier this year at the behest of a billionaire megadonor.

That’s according to the Florida Policy Institute, an Orlando-based think tank that has been tracking the fallout from the five-month-old law, which dramatically expanded a program known as “Schools of Hope” that provides taxpayer subsidies and administrative advantages to qualifying charter schools.

Among other changes, the last-minute legislation enables charter schools — which are public schools managed by private entities — to co-locate inside existing public schools without having to help pay for expenses like maintenance and food services. A charter operator that wants to move into a public school must first notify school districts of its intent to co-locate.

An excerpt from Senate Bill 2510.

So far, at least 22 school districts have received 690 such letters of intent covering 450 schools statewide, according to FPI’s research. (In some cases, multiple charter operators have expressed interest in locating inside the same public school.)

Click here to see the full list.

More than half of the notices — 367 in all — have come from Mater Academy and Somerset Academy, a pair of charter networks affiliated with Academica Corp., a for-profit management firm that has long had had financial ties to key Republican legislators.

Another 308 came from BridgePrep Academy, which works with Miami-based S.M.A.R.T. Management. Ten came from KIPP Team & Family of New Jersey.

And five have come from Success Academy, the polarizing New York City charter network that was one of the driving forces behind the Schools of Hope expansion and now plans to move into Florida.

Emails obtained by Seeking Rents through public-records requests show that the new law was pushed through the Florida Legislature at least in part by lobbyists for Success Academy and one of its biggest financial boosters: Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager and recent Miami transplant who has become one of the single biggest funders of Florida Republicans in Tallahassee.

The records show that allowing charter schools to co-locate inside public schools for free was particularly important to Success Academy. The provision was included in an initial draft of the Schools of Hope legislation that Success Academy lobbyists gave to Florida legislators to file in their own name.

An excerpt from draft legislation that lobbyists for Success Academy gave to state Rep. Jennifer Canady (R-Lakeland).

The sudden threat of charter schools embedding themselves inside hundreds of public schools has triggered an unusually large backlash across Florida, with parents and teachers likening the new law to a “a hostile takeover” and some locally elected school boards searching for ways to keep their campuses from being commandeered by private operators.

At least one state senator wants to undo the co-location law. But the DeSantis administration continues to defend it.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.

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