House Panel Denies More Money For Charter Schools

borman818 / flickr

Florida lawmakers agree on one issue: Charter schools need more money for renovations, equipment and software.

But House lawmakers have rejected a proposal that school districts say would take money from their traditional public schools and give it to charter schools.

Committee chairman Rep. Marti Coley, R-Marianna, said lawmakers need to find a funding solution for both types of schools.

“We have many policy issues that need to be discussed,” she said. “And that is how do we treat all our public schools fairly? At this point I don’t see legislation that has completely satisfied that question.”

The bill is the top priority of charter school advocacy groups this year, and supporters say they’re not giving up on it yet.Florida education advocacy groups including Citizens for Strong Schools, Fund Education Now, Save Duval Schools and Support Dade Schools issued this statement today praising the House Pre-K-12 Committee for defeating Rep. Janet Adkins’ amendment to HB 903.

Yesterday’s bi-partisan vote in the House Pre-K-12 Committee was a bold rejection of Rep. Adkins’ goal to hand our hard-earned public tax dollars over to for-profit charter developers to buy or improve private assets.  This is the second failure by the House to pass this measure which was stripped from HB 903 by House K-20 Innovations days ago. Members of our alliance testified against companion bill SB 1852 last week in the Senate K-12 Education committee.  That bill still gives public tax dollars away to for-profit corporations to buy and maintain assets the public will never own.  We oppose any and all efforts by politicians to turn tax dollars over to private corporations who value profit over the children we love.

What do you think? Should charter schools get more funding?