(Kelly Garcia) – This 2025 legislative session, Florida lawmakers demonstrated their commitment to providing high-quality education options for all students. After an extended legislative session, the legislature passed a bill making it easier for high-performing charters to serve students stuck in the state’s lowest-performing schools.
The bill allows charter schools to operate in vacant space inside traditional public school buildings, expands the eligibility for schools to qualify as a “School of Hope” and, most notably, provides an alternative pathway for charters to be authorized by the Florida Department of Education rather than the local school boards that have historically been hostile toward outside operators. Florida may be known for being the nation’s most private school choice-friendly state, but the new bill proves Florida’s commitment to its most vulnerable public school students, too. Lawmakers in other states should take note.
In 2017, Schools of Hope became an official designation for a charter school operating within 5 miles of a failing public school after the public school earned a D or F on its school grade for three consecutive years. At the time, former Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran hoped to attract high-performing charter systems to the state. Today, eight years since the program’s inception, only 12 Schools of Hope operate in Florida.
The new bill is an intentional expansion strategy, making it easier for the number of Schools of Hope to grow by eliminating the traditional barriers to entry for charter operators. With this new piece of legislation, any school ranking in the bottom 10th percentile in third-grade English or fourth-grade math in two of the three past years is now eligible. The welcome mat for high-performing charters has been laid.
Now, charter school operators can seek approval from the state Department of Education. Critics argue that the change moves toward state overreach and ignores the desires of the local officials elected by their community, but clearing the path for new models to enter the market allows parents the ability to choose what is best for their children by voting with their feet, tipping the scales in the parents’ favor.
The law requires that charters have access to underused or vacant district buildings rent-free. One critic of the new law argued: “Public schools are being asked to underwrite their competition. It’s absurd.”
If public schools were serving students to their parents’ satisfaction, they would not have the space to spare. Indeed, Florida continues to see a decrease in its public school enrollment, and recent data indicates there is no sign of a slowdown.
“School districts in Broward, Duval and Miami-Dade counties have enrolled some 53,000 fewer students since 2019-2020,” Politico reports. Recent data from the state Office of Economic and Demographic Research estimates that Florida public school enrollment declined by half a percentage point between the 2023-2024 school year and the 2024-2025 school year. Ensuring that open space in taxpayer-funded school district buildings is used to serve vulnerable students is fiscally responsible and morally right.
Public schools remain cornerstones of communities. Nationally, most students still attend public schools. Even with universal eligibility for private school scholarships, public school students deserve access to the best, whether in traditional public schools or innovative public charter schools.
The new Florida bill serves as a model that ensures more public school students and parents have a way out of schools that have failed them. Breaking down barriers to innovation, opening the free market and providing options for the most vulnerable: this is what education freedom means, and what students deserve.
Kelly Garcia is a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, the executive director for GuidEd, and a member of the Florida State Board of Education. She wrote this for InsideSources.com, originally published 7/7/25. The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views.
