Broward and Palm Beach County school districts are not rolling out the welcome mat for charter schools looking to share space on their campuses, instead rejecting nearly every request they’ve received.
Charter school providers submitted 197 requests to the two districts to open what are known as “Schools of Hope” during the 2027-28 school year, but 196 have been turned down.
Palm Beach County said no to all 70 requests it received from three different operators: Mater Academy, BridgePrep Academy and Somerset Academy. The district said BridgePrep and Somerset were automatically rejected because they aren’t among the seven state-approved schools of hope operators.
The Broward school district has approved none yet and has already turned down all but one, a request from KIPP Team & Family Schools Inc. to open a school on the campus of William Dandy Middle in Fort Lauderdale. District spokesman John Sullivan said KIPP officials plan to meet with Superintendent Howard Hepburn about their proposal on Thursday.
Broward turned down five other requests by KIPP, as well as all 20 requests from Mater. The district also rejected 20 applications from Somerset and 81 from BridgePrep, saying they weren’t approved providers. Both providers had told school districts in their requests that they expected to be approved providers soon.
The schools of hope law, which first took effect in 2017, initially allowed charter school providers deemed by the state as high-performing to receive incentives to locate near a school designated as “persistently low-performing.”
But the law was greatly expanded this year to allow some charter schools to locate on the same campus as traditional schools, many of which are not designated as low-performing but are either within five miles of a state-identified low-performing school or inside an “Opportunity Zone,” which is a federal designation for some economically distressed areas. The state also expanded the criteria for persistently low-performing schools, resulting in some A- and B-rated schools making the list.
School leaders across the state have voiced concerns about the impact schools of hope may have on their campuses and budgets.
Districts are required to provide many services free of charge, including maintenance, custodial service, food service and security. Broward Superintendent Howard Hepburn wrote in a recent memo to state legislators that the district may have to spend $22 million in nurses and social workers alone to accommodate the charter schools.
“The recent revisions to the Schools of Hope rules present many areas of concern for our school district,” Hepburn wrote in a Nov. 14 memo to local legislators. “Moreover, they have a deleterious impact on the progress we have made through our Redefining Our Schools efforts,” which is an initiative to find new uses for low-enrolled school campuses.
Broward has rejected requests to locate at any school that is under review in the Redefining Our Schools initiative.
Broward rejected nine requests, and Palm Beach four, because the schools failed to meet geographic guidelines of where schools of hope may locate, the letters to the providers show. These include requests to locate in areas such as Pembroke Pines, Coral Springs and Palm Beach Gardens, which are neither close to a low-performing school or in a federal opportunity zone.
The two school districts rejected 26 applications for schools for what they described as “material impracticality,” which means there are conditions that would make it difficult for them to share space.
Broward told some providers that some schools don’t have enough parking or that the district already has plans to use extra space for office workers. The district said its three technical colleges — Atlantic in Coconut Creek, McFatter in Davie, and Sheridan in Fort Lauderdale — are full with high school and adult students and don’t have extra space.
The district rejected a request to share space at Rickards Middle in Oakland Park, saying the school was under construction and operating out of portables. The district has previously said the school will be completed in 2026, and the request from Mater Academy was for the 2027-28 school year.
Palm Beach County cited issues about traffic congestion and safety, such as concerns about comingling younger students with older ones on the same campus. The district said some schools requested are using all of their available classrooms, and in some cases, the state figures that showed low enrollment were outdated.
The district even argued that some schools rebuilt in recent years, including Pine Grove Elementary and Carver Middle in Delray Beach, could run against tax-exempt criteria if they were to share space with charter schools.
“Pine Grove Elementary School was financed with Certificates of Participation (“COPs”),” the district wrote in a letter to Mater Academy. “Any noncompliance by the School of Hope, such as engaging in activities that constitute excessive private business use or failing to adhere to operational restrictions associated with tax-exempt bond financing, could subject the District to heightened IRS scrutiny.”
It’s unclear whether school districts will be successful in keeping schools of hope off their campuses. State law allows the schools to appeal to a magistrate, who will hold an evidentiary hearing and make a recommendation to the commissioner of education. Officials from the two state-approved providers, Mater and KIPP, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
State Education Commissioner Anastasios “Stasi” Kamoutsas warned superintendents and school board members across the state Thursday that he expects full compliance with the schools of hope law.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for new buildings, two cafeterias, two nursing stations, two maintenance teams, two transportation departments in the same neighborhood just because some adults don’t like sharing space. That is not stewardship, that is not efficiency, that is waste,” Kamoutsas said at a joint meeting of the Florida School Boards Associations and the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
He said that although schools of hope have made hundreds of requests to locate on school campuses, “every Hope operator has committed to open only a handful of co-located schools” during the 2027-28 school year.
“We will use co-location where it makes sense,” Kamoutsas said. “We’re going to hold systems accountable publicly, transparently, and relentlessly. If that makes some people uncomfortable, so be it.”
