{"id":3268,"date":"2025-10-14T20:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/3268\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T20:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:59:08","slug":"parents-advocate-for-new-broward-charter-school-for-students-with-special-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/3268\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents advocate for new Broward charter school for students with special needs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0October 14, 2025 at 4:55 PM<\/p>\n<p>New state law opens doors for Schools of Hope charter school operators <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">BROWARD COUNTY, Fla.  \u2014 Jennifer Levi, a mother of three, said her youngest son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and he is in a Broward County Public School cluster class. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Levi said she and other parents are advocating for a charter school managed by BCPS that can meet the \u201cprofound and intense support needs\u201d of students with ASD. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cHe\u2019s part of a population that is significantly underserved,\u201d Levi said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Levi\u2019s vision comes as the Broward County School Board is dealing with a school district that faces a steep drop in enrollment. BCPS Superintendent Howard Hepburn recently said six schools could close because of it. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe had about an 8,000 to 9,000 student decline for the start of the school year, which equated to about $85 to $90 million,\u201d Hepburn said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">School districts in Florida were preparing for an influx of charter schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis approved Florida Senate Bill 2510 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2025\/2510\/ByVersion\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2025\/2510\/ByVersion\">on June 30<\/a>. The law requires \u201ca third-party administrator\u201d to transfer \u201cmoney from a loan fund\u201d to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fldoe.org\/schools\/school-choice\/other-school-choice-options\/schools-of-hope\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.fldoe.org\/schools\/school-choice\/other-school-choice-options\/schools-of-hope\/\">Schools of Hope program<\/a>, a charter school for students from \u201cpersistently low-performing schools.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">This means the charter school operators can move into public school campuses under capacity. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWhen you have a competitor in your building and we are actually paying for many of the services that they require, that\u2019s the journey that we\u2019re concerned about and how it\u2019s going to look for us as a school district,\u201d Hepburn said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">More on education<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Linnie Supall\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/https:\/\/author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/6a85a37b-1432-4f4e-81ec-.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Linnie Supall<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Linnie Supall is an Emmy nominated and award-winning journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0October 14, 2025 at 4:55 PM New state law opens doors for Schools of Hope charter school operators&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","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=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}