Charter schools, the facilities funding boogeyman?

As we noted last week, Florida’s perennial debate over charter school facilities funding is plagued by distortions that, even when debunked, don’t seem to go away.

State Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, went after some of them this week in a Miami Herald guest column.

Fresen chairs the committee that writes the Florida House’s education budget. In the column, he writes that charter schools have become a “boogeyman” in the annual legislative fight over facilities funding.

He writes:

As stated before, in 2015, Florida’s county-run school districts had access to $3.2 billion for capital projects. Charter schools had access to $50 million. If you apply those totals over the number of students enrolled in the schools, it translates to $200 per student in a charter school and $1,300 per student in a county-run school; a more than 6-to-1 funding advantage for county-run schools that was recently affirmed by PolitiFact.

In other words, there is no rational argument to be made that charter schools are taking capital money away from county-run schools or that charter funding caused school districts to build overpriced schools and additions.

Fresen contends school districts frequently overrun state guidelines for construction costs, which helps explain why many of them are short on cash for building maintenance. Districts have pushed back on this argument, which is based on an analysis by his committee.

A sweeping education bill that could be taken up today in the Senate includes some measures aimed at reining in districts’ construction spending. It would also give them more flexibility under state school construction rules, which aren’t as strict for charters.