{"id":23414,"date":"2015-03-11T10:35:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T14:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=23414"},"modified":"2015-03-12T10:58:22","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T14:58:22","slug":"amendment-would-give-charter-schools-a-share-of-school-construction-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2015\/03\/11\/amendment-would-give-charter-schools-a-share-of-school-construction-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Amendment Would Give Charter Schools A Share Of School Construction Money"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sen.<\/a>

JD Hancock \/ Flickr<\/p>

Sen. Don Gaetz has filed an amendment which would force school districts to share local construction money with charter schools.<\/p><\/div>\n

School districts would have to share local school construction and maintenance money with charter schools, according to an amendment filed by an influential state senator.<\/p>\n

Sen. Don Gaetz, a former Senate president, filed the amendment Tuesday<\/a>. The amendment would require half of the money raised by an optional local property tax to be split between charter and traditional schools on a per-student basis.<\/p>\n

Studies have found publicly-funded, but privately-run charter schools typically receive less money per student than traditional public schools. A good piece of the difference in Florida<\/a> is the local construction money — which few school districts share with charter schools.<\/p>\n

Earmarking a source of construction funding has been a top priority of charter schools for years<\/a>. Charter schools argue their parents are taxpayers too, so public money should pay for charter school construction and maintenance.<\/p>\n

Every year school districts and charter schools fight over a dwindling pool of construction and maintenance money funded by utility taxes in the state budget<\/a>. Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to cut those taxes could mean even less money to fight over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But there are good arguments for charter schools receiving less money than traditional charter schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Florida, school districts provide transportation, personnel — such as special education staff — and may provide other services<\/a>. In addition, charter schools aren’t required to meet the same construction standards as district public schools.<\/p>\n

Orlando-based Fund Education Now calls the amendment a money-grab and says they’ll oppose it. Real estate is often a profitable<\/a> venture for charter school management companies or financiers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bill — and amendment — is up for debate at a meeting this afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

School districts would have to share local school construction and maintenance money with charter schools, according to an amendment filed by an influential state senator. Sen. Don Gaetz, a former Senate president, filed the amendment Tuesday. The amendment would require half of the money raised by an optional local property tax to be split between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[980,794,1009],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23419,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23414\/revisions\/23419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}