State Sen. Darryl Rouson wants to dial back the “chaos” caused by a charter school bill that Florida lawmakers slipped into law in the the final hours of their spring overtime session.
The law allows operators who run the subset of charters called Schools of Hope to claim access to empty spaces in under-capacity public schools without paying rent or operating expenses.
District officials across the state saw the potential impact of the law in early October, when Mater Academy sent letters to districts announcing its intent to “co-locate” into hundreds of their schools.
The pushback came immediately, with some districts such as Sarasota County taking quick action to reduce their vacant space in order to prevent such a takeover, as Suncoast Searchlight reported. Officials in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties also decried the law, saying they intended to fight for its reversal.
Rouson, who represents parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas, said he heard the message loud and clear.
“It’s an unfunded mandate and a burden on public schools to be required to exist in the same space as charter schools, in a sense paying the cost for the charter school to operate,” he said.
Rouson said he did not support the idea of allowing the Schools of Hope to use the space without covering their operating costs, as the law currently allows. Beyond that, though, the concept could cause a variety of other issues, he added, such as overlapping schedules and differing expectations and rules.
“It just creates a lot of problems, and we need to rethink the efficiency of doing this,” Rouson said.
His bill (SB 424) would delete the lines that say a School of Hope may co-locate in an under-used, vacant or surplus public school, and that the school district must permit such access. It also would remove the language saying that a School of Hope may use those facilities at no cost.
The proposal further would eliminate changes to the definitions of persistently low-performing school and the area in which Schools of Hope may operate, both of which the law had expanded beyond the initial intent.
There is no House companion, but Rouson said he expected one. He wouldn’t predict the final outcome.
“We don’t always file bills because the impacted people are willing to accept the authority,” he said. “We do so because we want to create a discussion, examine the impact and hopefully bring them along into our train of thought.”
Reversing course on unpopular education laws is not unheard of in Florida. Last session, the Legislature overturned laws on mandatory later high school start times and door and gate lock requirements after hearing from districts that implementation was proving problematic.
©2025 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
