Florida school districts have long asserted the power to approve and reject would-be charter schools as they saw fit. Legal gray areas remain. But a recent court ruling could help clarify some of them.
The state constitution gives school boards the power to oversee all public schools within their boundaries. However, it also gives the Legislature and state Board of Education the power to regulate their use of that authority. The tension between state and local power has been at the heart of more than a decade's worth of legal battles over charter schools.
Districts won a crucial legal victory in 2008 when courts shut down a state-created Schools of Excellence Commission that could authorize charter schools. They lost a battle last year, when the Palm Beach County School Board challenged the state's charter school appeal system. (more…)
The state Board of Education on Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal creating a standard contract that will serve as a model for charter school agreements throughout the state.
Districts and charters alike have raised concerns about aspects of the plan — a sign, state school choice director Adam Miller said, that the proposal struck a balance between the two camps.
Much of the pushback, he noted during the board's meeting in Central Florida, centered on the policy of standard contracts itself. Districts have contended the proposal, created in response to 2013 legislation, is unconstitutional.
State officials have spent nearly a year and a half refining the plan, taking input from district and charter school attorneys.
Florida school boards are questioning the constitutionality of standard charter school contracts as the state Board of Education gets set to vote on rules creating them.
Their objections appear in hundreds of pages of recent comments and letters to the state Department of Education. The Florida School Boards Association wrote in July: "We view this as an unconstitutional encroachment on the school board's authority to operate, supervise, and control all public schools within the school district.”
The comments and letters were obtained by redefinED through a public records request. They reflect more than a year of public pushing and behind-the-scenes wrangling over standardized charter school contracts. The rules creating them are set to come before the state board at its November meeting.
The proposed contracts were set in motion by a 2013 law. Backed by charter school advocates, the law required the Department of Education to develop a standard contract that would serve as a starting point for agreements between charter schools and every district in the state. The stated goal: To streamline the contract process, set a baseline for expectations and create an opportunity for more meaningful negotiations.
In a state with nearly 650 charter schools, and dozens more opening each year, charter advocates have also raised concerns that districts were trying to constrain charter schools with troublesome contract provisions that went beyond requirements in the law.
DOE officials started drawing up the draft contract in the summer of 2013. They started with a draft that combined provisions from existing charter contracts used by several school districts, then spent more than a year revising the proposal based on feedback from half a dozen public hearings and written suggestions from districts and charters alike.
But even as they suggested changes, school boards, superintendents and their Tallahassee associations began raising constitutional objections. (more…)
