Every charter school in Florida is authorized and managed by the elected members of the local school district. But in the coming months this longstanding dynamic is set to undergo a tectonic shift, starting in Miami.
As soon as next March, Miami Dade College will begin to authorize new charter schools, according to a presentation given to prospective charter schools that WLRN reviewed. The move, for all intents and purposes, cuts the authority of Miami-Dade Public Schools to oversee charter schools in the nation's third-largest school district.
Charter schools are privately-run schools that use public money. But they are considered public schools by law, and as required for all public schools by the Florida Constitution, they are managed as public schools.
The Florida Constitution lays it out clearly: "the school board shall operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district."
The new system will hand the power to authorize new charter schools to unelected members of the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees, stripping that exclusive authority from directly elected local school board members at the school district. All members of the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
" I believe it's a violation of our Florida Constitution," said Crystal Etienne, the president of EduVoter, an organization that hopes to protect traditional public education in Florida. " It's a parallel system, and they're taking away the authority of the district to make [decisions], so that's clearly overreach."
In 2008, a similar effort by the state to bypass local school districts was ruled as blatantly unconstitutional by a state appeals court. That was after the state created in 2006 the "Florida Schools of Excellence Commission," which directly authorized and supervised charter schools across the state. The appeals court ruling found the effort created "a parallel system of free public education" and that "no set of circumstances" could give another entity power to strip oversight of charter schools away from local school districts.
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It is unclear how that precedent could factor into how things play out with Miami Dade College's new efforts. The ruling against the state was never appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.
The rapid expansion of charter schools and expanded private school vouchers has become a major issue in Florida over the past several years. As charters and public dollars flowing to private schools have expanded, enrollment in traditional public schools has dropped. Some districts such as Broward County will potentially have to close schools due to private sector competition.
The first charter school in the state was founded by Jeb Bush in Liberty City in 1996. That first school he started later shut down after lackluster test scores plagued it. But after Bush was elected as a Republican governor in 1998, the banner of school choice was raised high, and much of Bush's attention on the charter school movement continued to take place in Miami.
Bush's singular focus on school choice resulted in Florida becoming a national leader in the charter school movement, a movement Gov. Ron DeSantis has championed as well. There are currently 739 charter schools spread across every corner of the state, serving nearly 400,000 students.
" I think over the next couple of months you are going to see an even more surgical cut to public education in the state of Florida, specifically in Miami," said Etienne. "It's gonna start in Miami-Dade. Miami-Dade County is the testing ground for all things public education in Florida."
Key decisions shift to governor appointees
The part of Miami Dade College that will soon be approving charter schools is the Florida Charter Institute, which functions as both a research institute and charter school authorizer. The Institute was created in 2022 by a bill sponsored by then-Republican State Senator Manny Diaz Jr., shortly before Diaz became the Florida Commissioner of Education. Diaz has deep connections to the charter school industry, and was at the forefront of privatizing the entire school district in Jefferson County in North Florida, an experiment that ended in scandal and failure.
A previous bill sponsored by Diaz in 2021 allowed colleges to authorize new charter schools.
Then, in 2022 under his leadership, Diaz and the State Board of Education voted to allow Miami Dade College to be allowed to authorize charter schools, an authority that is only now starting to be exercised.
"Frankly, public education, if it's going to be funded by public dollars, in my opinion, the public should have a method by which to hold it accountable.”
In a presentation last month to prospective charter schools reviewed by WLRN, staff of the Florida Charter Institute at Miami Dade College explained how the new system would work.
Applications for charter schools were due on Dec. 1. An application and review period, along with interviews, would take place between December and January.
Then, in late January, the "Charter Advisory Board" of Miami Dade College will review applications. The college has not responded to specific questions about who is on the advisory board.
But the final decision in March 2026 on whether a charter school will be authorized rests with the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees.
"The funding from the state will all flow through the college. All of the evaluations, the monitoring, everything that typically happens with a school district will be happening with the college," Chris Fuller, the chief operating officer at the Florida Charter Institute, told attendees of the webinar.
Fuller then drew a contrast between how the college will operate and how he said the school district operates.
"I think one of the benefits of going to a college authorizers is that colleges are wanting to do this work," Fuller said. "We're going to be looking at the same types of things that the districts look at, but with the mindset that we really do want to make this a partnership, and we want to make it successful."
Luisa Santos, an elected Miami-Dade school board member, told WLRN that she sees no reason for the contrast. From 2019 to 2023, the school board of Miami-Dade County did not deny a single charter school application. In fact, it approved 43, according to state records.
For that reason, said Santos, she does not understand why prospective charter schools might want to choose a college authorizer over the school district.
"I'm sure it certainly isn't because of an overly burdensome process or anything like that," said Santos.
Letting Miami Dade College authorize new charter schools will only add complications to the community that is already confused about how charter schools are managed and overseen, said Santos.
The Florida Department of Education did not respond to requests for information about whether other colleges or universities in the state will soon become charter school authorizers.
For Santos, there is a simple reason why the authority of authorizing and overseeing charter schools has always rested with the elected school district, as opposed to a board made up of governor appointees.
"We are accountable to voters. And I can tell you that voters remind us all the time — we can be replaced through elections if they aren't happy with us," said Santos.
The stakes could not be higher for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools district. As a new Schools of Hope law goes into effect, charter schools will soon be allowed to take over sections of public schools if they are deemed to be "underutilized." School districts will still be required to cover the cost of utilities, nurses, building maintenance, custodial work, groundskeeping and food services for the facilities.
Opponents have likened the law to a "hostile takeover" of traditional public schools, and Miami-Dade schools have received 90 notices of charters that want to move into traditional public schools.
Board member Santos voiced frustration on how locally elected officials are increasingly being cut out of high-stake decisions about the district.
"These are public assets, public buildings. Frankly, public education," said Santos. "If it's going to be funded by public dollars, in my opinion, the public should have a method by which to hold it accountable."
Potential conflicts of interest
The chairman of the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees is Michael Bileca, the owner of charter school company True North Classical Academy.
Bileca would likely have to recuse himself from any vote connected to his company or connected to schools that could be considered direct competition to his business, Todd Ziebarth, an executive at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, told WLRN.
Also sitting on the college Board of Trustees are Roberto Alonso and Maria Bosque Blanco. Both are elected Miami-Dade school board members.
Ziebarth said in all his time as a strong supporter of the charter schools movement he has never come across a non-school district authorizer having elected school district members on the board, referring to Alonso and Blanco, saying it could raise questions about conflict of interest.
"I'm not sure what the attorneys at the district or at the college would say about whether they just have to recuse themselves in both places from any kinds of decisions around it," Ziebarth told WLRN. "It does have real financial impacts on the district or the college if you're gonna do this."
Neither Bileca, Alonso or Blanco responded to requests for interviews or comment from WLRN.
As an authorizer, Miami Dade College could stand to receive up to 5% of per-pupil revenue — up to 250 students —, a spokesperson for the Florida Charter Institute told WLRN. High performing charter schools would give the college 2% of per-pupil revenue. The fees are not intended to make profit for the authorizer, they are intended to provide for the cost of oversight.
As Miami Dade College becomes a player in creating new charter schools, existing charter schools will also be able to transfer their oversight from the school district to the college.
Ziebarth said undoubtedly some charter schools will try to do this, shifting away from elected officials overseeing their operations.
"It just might be a either perceived or real feeling that, you know, the oversight at Miami Dade College might not be as burdensome as it is at the school district," he said.
There can be good or bad outcomes on letting charter schools transfer oversight to a different authorizer, said Ziebarth. In "hostile" school districts that micromanage charter schools, the move can make sense to provide for more flexibility, autonomy and innovation.
"It makes a ton of sense for the charter school to move to an entity that will take a very different approach while still holding it accountable for performance," said Ziebarth. "On the flip side, we've seen in some states — a chronically low performing charter school faces closure and moves over to another authorizer in order to stay open. And we strongly oppose that."
In South Carolina, for example, low performing charter schools have engaged in what critics call "authorizer shopping" by moving from one authorizer to another to remain open. Other states like Minnesota and Ohio have dealt with similar issues in the past, said Ziebarth, and lawmakers had to pass a patchwork of laws to address the issues.
Ziebarth played a role in the creation of the statewide charter school authorizing entity "Florida Schools of Excellence Commission" in 2006 that was declared unconstitutional by a state appeals court in 2008. He told WLRN that on the heels of that lawsuit, Florida stuck to its system of only letting school districts approve new charter schools, while allowing appeals of those decisions to be held at a state level.
"I think there's been this lingering kind of constitutional question there about whether you could create some kind of non-district entity and if so, what it would look like and how would you do it to be constitutional," said Ziebarth. " So somebody might challenge like whether Miami Dade College can do this."
New charter schools coming to Florida
The DeSantis administration recently rolled out the red carpet for Success Academy, a major charter school operator based in New York City. Success Academy has regularly surpassed its peers in educational performance metrics, even as its tactics have been called into question.
But the state of New York has reached a cap on the number of charter schools it will allow, and the network sees Florida as a place to grow the business.
At a press conference in September at Florida International University, Gov. DeSantis announced the arrival of the school network to Florida, drawing a sharp contrast between Florida and New York.
"In New York, they do everything they can do to try to prevent you from being successful. Here in Florida, we're gonna do everything we can to ensure that you're successful," said DeSantis. "I think that the sky's gonna be the limit for what they're gonna be able to do in the state of Florida."
READ MORE: Major New York City-based charter school network to expand in Miami. DeSantis cheers the move
Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy, was emotional in her remarks to a crowd.
"I have been fighting, as the governor said, in a blue state. I'm not used to being welcomed. I'm not used to people liking high standards," said Moskowitz.
Billionaire and political mega-donor Ken Griffin announced at the press conference that he would be gifting $50 million to Success Academy to help it open schools in Miami-Dade.
Success Academy hopes to enroll between 8,000 and 10,000 students in the next five years in Miami-Dade, and eventually grow into other parts of the state, according to the Miami Herald. Success has submitted five applications to the local school district in hopes of operating inside of traditional public schools.
Under the new system, the Miami-Dade school district could find itself with limited say in the matter, since key decisions and oversight could be taken over by Miami Dade College. Further, the Florida Charter Institute at Miami Dade College issued a research paper in October arguing that charter schools should be able to take over the space of traditional public schools.
"If that's the way the state of Florida wants to go, then like, eliminate school boards altogether," said local school board member Santos.
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