This recent Gainesville Sun article provides another example of how public education is expanding to include private and home schooled students. The Alachua County School District, where the University of Florida is located, will soon be offering online middle and high school courses through a partnership with the Florida Virtual School. According to the article, “The eSchool will begin in January and is open to all students — public, private and home-schooled students.”

The district is hoping to recoup lost market share and revenue through these new course offerings: “One positive for the district, officials said, is that money paid by the state for student enrollment, also known as full-time equivalent funds, will come to the district instead of going to the Florida Virtual School.”

Even small school districts in Florida have now concluded the old distinctions between public and private education no longer exist. It’s a new world.

"I'm concerned that our Legislature is succumbing to the mega-Wall Street charter school operations that are certainly not local and are far removed from the public." -- Dan Boyd, superintendent of the Alachua County school system, to the Gainesville Sun, on his fears that a Florida law encouraging the expansion of high-performing charter schools will attract profit-making academies to his district.

"We're not from Wall Street, we're from Fort Lauderdale." -- Jon Hage, the president and CEO of Charter Schools USA, in the same Gainesville Sun story.