The insatiable greed of Florida's charter schools

As Tallahassee has criminally underfunded public education more and more localities have admirably stepped up to fund their public schools. Not content with starving our public schools, charter schools bought and paid for legislators have been pushing legislation demanding this money, which I remind you was raised just for public schools, to be given to charters as well.

From the Florida Politics,

A tax package moving through the Florida House could force traditional public schools to share more money with charter schools, or even invalidate county tax referendum language approved by voters.

Current law allows for four types of millage levies to fund schools.

Taxes collected through three of those avenues — the required local effort (RLE) levy, the current operating discretionary millage levy and the ad valorem millage for capital outlay — must be shared with charter schools.

Florida school districts may also raise funds via voter-approved tax referendums, which cannot last for more than four years and must detail how the money will be spent. Per the state Department of Education’s Florida Standard Charter Contract, school districts can choose whether to split that money with charters.

Among the changes in the Ways and Means Committee’s bill, HB 7123, is a requirement that those funds be split with charters. The bill’s requirement would be retroactive.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/293704-house-bill-could-invalidate-school-tax-referendums

Here are some things you should remember about charter schools, about half are run by for profit companies.

The state annually sends charters hundreds of millions of dollars for maintenance while forcing thousands of public schools to share a fraction of what charters get.

Charters which are privately owned and often built with public money and if something happens to them and they close, the public losses that investment. 

This is a despicable attack on public education and a slap in the face to all the counties which have stepped up to help their public schools. Absolutely shameful.