Report: Fewer new Florida charter schools approved

Florida school boards received fewer applications for new charter schools last year than in any year since 2008, and they approved just one in four — the lowest rate in at least a decade.

Overall, school boards approved 50 of the 199 charter school applications they received during the 2014-15 school year, according to the latest annual authorizer report, which the state Department of Education prepares each fall.

The main trend identified in last year’s report — that it’s getting harder to open a charter school in Florida — continues to hold.

To the extent that means school districts are getting better at screening charter school applications, and saying “no” to risky operations that could implode shortly after the open, that could be a good thing. But if high-performing charters are putting off expansion plans because of, say, a lack of facilities funding or political disputes with school boards, the trend could be a sign of stress for what has been a fast-growing charter sector, and a source of worry for school choice advocates.

There’s some interesting variation among school districts. Broward County, which has seen an unusually large number of charter school failures, approved more than 40 percent of its applications, but Orange County’s approval rate was even higher, at 44 percent. Palm Beach County, which is taking the state to court over its charter school approval process, approved zero, as did Pinellas. Miami-Dade, Duval and Hillsborough Counties landed between the two extremes.

Some other telling facts in the report:

• No application for a virtual charter school made it past the draft phase.
• School boards decided less than one in five charter school applications (16 percent) within the 60-day time frame contemplated in state law.
• More than half (109) of the charter school applications submitted last year were withdrawn from consideration before school boards could decide their fates. Operators poised for rejection often withdraw their applications to avoid a blemish on their track record.

Florida’s charter schools saw a post-recession growth spurt that peaked in 2011, when more than 100 new schools were approved. This report provides the latest sign the state’s charter school movement, now headed into its 20th year, is evolving with maturity.