JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Duval County School Board held a workshop on Tuesday to discuss the Schools of Hope program, an effort by charter schools to locate in underused district space.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Florida Department of Education expanded the Schools of Hope program to allow certain charter schools to co-locate in public schools for free, if there\u2019s enough room and the plans meet other criteria.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax previously told you about Miami-based charter operator, Mater Academy<\/a>, and its plan to move into Duval County schools. The charter school sent letters to Duval County, requesting to move into 25 district schools.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n But in December, Mater Academy withdrew 23 of those offers, still leaving room for the charter school to move into Merrill Road Elementary and Fort Caroline School of the Arts.<\/p>\n On January 8, DCPS formally rejected Mater Academy\u2019s co-location applications for both of those schools due to it being \u2018materially impractical.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cFor Fort Caroline, the reasons that we use were around their specialized arts program,\u201d said Eugene Hays, Director of the Office of School Choice Pathways for DCPS. \u201cThe way that building is utilized is not exactly coherent to use with a co-located school. For Merrill Road, you as a board have already approved the merger of Don Brewer into Merrill Road, and that\u2019s not going to leave enough student stations.\u201d <\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n But school board members still have questions about how a charter school co-located within a district school would logistically work.<\/p>\n \u201cHow does the DOE determine that a School of Hope applicant has a proven track record?\u201d asked DCPS School Board member Cindy Pearson.<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as resources like the resource officers, things like that, is that something that\u2019s worked in?\u201d asked DCPS School Board member Reginald Blount.<\/p>\n School board members hope to get some answers during the Florida Department of Education\u2019s rule-making workshop for schools of hope on Monday, January 26.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Duval County School Board held a workshop on Tuesday to discuss the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,62124,1040,1038,4302,28,348,116,351,118,117,7535,349,7539,350,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-125333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-charter-schools-in-jacksonville","11":"tag-dcps","12":"tag-duval-county-public-schools","13":"tag-duval-county-school-board","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-fox30","16":"tag-jacksonville","17":"tag-jacksonville-fl","18":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","19":"tag-jacksonville-news","20":"tag-mater-academy","21":"tag-northeast-florida","22":"tag-schools-of-hope","23":"tag-southeast-georgia","24":"tag-wfox","25":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}