Funding for Florida’s charter school facilities would return to 2014 levels under a budget agreement reached this evening.
The agreement between House and Senate negotiators would set aside $75 million for charter school capital outlay.
That would be an increase of $25 million from the current year, but less than charters received in 2013, when they served more than 40,000 fewer students than they do now.
The two legislative budget chairmen, Rep. Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes and Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, are still hammering out portions of the Legislature’s 2016-17 budget. In Sunday talks, they signed off on more than $700 million for education-related construction projects. More than half the total would go to colleges and universities.
In addition to the funding for charters, school districts would get $75 million for building maintenance and another $75 million would be set aside to build new public schools in rural communities.
The plan, which still needs to pass the full Legislature, would be financed by the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars in state revenue bonds, a departure from the debt-averse budgeting of Gov. Rick Scott, who has the power to veto individual line items in the state budget.
This year, Florida’s more than 650 charter schools split about $50 million in capital outlay funding, meaning they received about $185 per student for facilities, technology and other capital investments. Charters only qualify to share in the funding if they have operated for at least three years and avoided financial problems or bad state letter grades.
School districts, which levy more than $2 billion a year in local property taxes earmarked for capital spending and receive hundreds of millions more from other local sources, receive substantially more per student than charters, but also must contend with bond payments and higher building costs.
The state House has advanced a bill that would steer some district property-tax revenue to charters, but the Senate has not approved such a plan and has countered with a measure aimed at reining in “private enrichment” from charter school facilities. The upper chamber is expected to vote on its sweeping education legislation in the coming days, and the 60-day legislative session is set to end Friday.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the status of the House’s bill dealing with property-tax revenue. HB 873 has not yet been taken up on the floor. We regret the error.
