It would mean that charter schools would get more money per student than public schools get. The article says that Orange and Polk Counties would be hit the hardest by the bill.
UPDATE: The bill today passed the Senate panel.
The bill is being introduced by Stephen Wise. A reporter from WFTV called his office for updates, but she never got a response.
New bill being proposed to redistribute funds for traditional schools
WFTV learned millions of dollars are being proposed for charter schools.
The Central Florida school districts that stand to lose the most are Orange and Polk Counties at $4.4 million each. Lake County is expected to lose $3 million.
WFTV learned that if SB-1852 becomes a law, 20 percent of the money used to maintain traditional school buildings in Central Florida would instead go to privately run charter schools.
Orange County Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Richard Collins said it's an amount of money traditional schools can't stand to lose.
"You're taking scarce resources that are sorely needed to maintain our existing facilities," said Collins.
Not only are the resources scarce, but it is public taxpayer money being used to do this.
Here is more from the Florida Times Union just tonight.
Senate panel OKs bill forcing school districts to share construction funds with charter schools
Legislation that would, among other things, require county school districts to share a pot of construction money with charter schools was rammed through a Senate committee Monday, leaving 12 hostile amendments on the table
At issue is about $1.9 billion that 40 school districts — including Duval and St. Johns — raise from taxpayers mostly for construction projects. Current law allows districts to share some of that money with charter schools, but most don’t.
Under the bill sponsored by state Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, that sharing would be mandatory. It would mean $140 million would be sliced from the construction pot and sent to charter schools. In Duval and St. Johns counties it would equate to $3.4 million.
With budget cuts in recent years, opponents say traditional public schools simply can’t afford the loss.
“We are not OK with this form of corporate welfare, especially when our traditional publicly owned schools are suffering,” said St. Johns County resident Colleen Wood, who helps lead nonprofit education group Save Duval Schools.
Stephen Wise is not only pushing to fund charter schools and defund public schools, he has been one of the major opponents to any teaching of evolution in Florida schools.
Florida’s Stephen Wise: Hidden Depths of Stupid
Wise, R-Jacksonville, thinks his evolution bill may have a better chance this year because there are more conservatives in the Legislature and because he chairs a substantive committee. “Why would you not teach both theories at the same time?” Wise said, referring to evolution and what he called “nonevolution.”
Ah — “nonevolution.” Why doesn’t he say “creationism” or “supernatural design”? The sure sign of a charlatan who is trying to conceal his motives is that he coins his own terminology for well-established concepts. Let’s read on:
In 2009, Wise told WMNF radio he was concerned that students might be persecuted for wanting to talk about intelligent design.
“Why do we still have apes if we came from them?” Wise, a retired educator, said during the interview with the Tampa radio station. “And those are the kind of questions kids need to ask themselves. You know, ‘how did we get here?’ And, you know, there’s more than one theory on this thing. And the theory is evolution, the other one is intelligent design.”
According to the Miami Herald today the public schools and parents fought back but lost to the charter schools.
Florida school districts fought hard to defeat the bill, saying it would all but kill their ability to pay down debt on existing construction projects. Parent groups chimed in too, saying public dollars should not go to charter school facilities, which are often owned by private companies and are not part of the public domain.
Broward County schools lobbyist Georgia Slack called the bill “a disaster to our capital outlay program.”
“This will cost us $20 million” a year Slack said. “We don’t have it.”
Miami-Dade officials said they would likely lose out on about $45 million yearly.
But in the end, the charter schools won the round, arguing that children enrolled in charter schools deserve the same amount of tax dollars as children in traditional public schools.
Florida school districts are fighting a bill that would require them to share construction dollars with charter schools.
The state legislature and Governor Scott are dedicated to the school reform movement even more than both parties are on a national level. I am inclined to think it is only a matter of time until the demise of public schools in our state.