This week, while the school board in one generally charter-friendly Florida district was voting to reject a charter school application, another lamented the limits of its authority.
Speakers lined up to oppose a pair of charter school applications before the Hillsborough County School Board. Most dinged charter schools generally but concentrated their criticism on for-profit management companies.
In a sign of rising political tensions, some school officials talked about turning their attention toward Tallahassee.
In some ways, Hillsborough County seems like friendly territory for charter schools. Steady population growth, a well-regarded charter school office and a relatively collaborative climate have allowed the district to avoid some of the problems that cropped up elsewhere in the state.
However, the school district is under fiscal stress. New needs, like security officers, add to its expenses. Superintendent Jeff Eakins is reorganizing the administration to shed an unsustainable cost structure and talking about a local tax referendum to boost revenue.
Stephanie Baxter-Jenkins of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association was one of several speakers who argued charter schools make the problems worse. The union is trying to negotiate a new contract. Its demands for raises have run headlong into a lack of available funding. With that backdrop, she asked the school board to reject two applications to open K-8 charter schools in the fast-growing Riverview area.
“I’m going to ask that you say no, because it is the right thing to do for all of the students,” she said. “We can’t run consistently two systems. You’re lacking economies of scale. You’re lacking the funds to do well in either.”
Hillsborough County charter schools have grown rapidly. They added more than 7,400 students since the 2013-14 school year. But district schools added more than 6,000 students — and the per-pupil revenue that comes with them — during the same period. Blaming the district’s fiscal woes on a loss of enrollment to charter schools seems like a stretch.
Other charter school critics cited studies by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University. Several of these studies have painted a less-than-flattering picture of Florida charter school performance. But a recent report, on urban charters, found a more positive picture in Hillsborough. It showed Tampa charter school students outperform demographically matched peers in district-run schools on math tests. Charter students fared better in reading, too, but the differences weren’t statistically significant.
Those mostly positive findings stand in contrast to other Florida cities, like Fort Myers or West Palm Beach, where charter results were negative across the board.
Jean Yglesias, with League of Woman Voters, raised concerns about low-performing charter schools that shutter within a few years of opening. “More needs to be done to vet these applications,” she said.
Statewide, this problem has worried district and charter school officials alike. Hillsborough has largely avoided the problems seen elsewhere, though, and Jenna Hodgens, who leads the district’s charter office, helps her counterparts in other districts improve their oversight.
Since 2015, the district has seen three charter schools close for reasons other than mergers. One of those was a virtual charter school, which is now authorized in another district. Another was a small, 20-year-old Montessori school that closed amid shrinking enrollment. The third, King’s Kids Academy of Health Sciences, served almost all low-income children of color and shuttered last summer after earning three consecutive “F” grades from the state.
Board members Lynn Gray and Melissa Snively had questions about the scrutiny Hodgens applies to groups that want to start charters. They wanted to know if they could get more personally involved in the vetting.
Jim Porter, the board’s attorney, told them that wouldn’t be appropriate. The district’s professional staff vet charter applications to see if they meet the requirements in state law. If they meet the requirements, the staff recommend approval. If the district were to follow its counterparts in Palm Beach or Leon County and try to block a charter school in an act of “civil disobedience,” the would-be schools could head to the state Charter School Appeals Commission and overturn the board’s decision.
“Charter schools are a creature of the Legislature,” Porter said.
Connie Milito, the district’s top lobbyist, chimed in. The state’s charter school laws give school boards a “limited role.”
“Mrs. Hodgens has one of the worst jobs in the world, in my opinion, because she has to make recommendations based on law, no matter what,” she said. “You don’t know the ones she talks out of applying. She talks a lot of people out of it, because the application is no good. But she has to recommend to the superintendent those that meet [the requirements in state law].”
For that reason, Milito endorsed the plan for the board to hold a workshop on the state’s charter school laws. And she noted the political backdrop.
“It’s time for election season,” she said. “Ask the question of the candidates. Find out where their minds are.”
