{"id":33713,"date":"2025-11-05T02:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T02:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33713\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T02:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T02:23:10","slug":"duval-schools-lobbying-tallahassee-for-schools-of-hope-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33713\/","title":{"rendered":"Duval Schools lobbying Tallahassee for Schools of Hope changes\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Duval school district officials are \u201chaving meetings\u201d with members of the state legislative delegation and will travel to Tallahassee this month to \u201cengage with them privately in their offices\u201d about changing the Schools of Hope<\/a> charter school program, Duval Superintendent Chris Bernier said Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a town hall meeting at Riverside High School Monday, Bernier flipped through a slide deck that showed districtwide enrollment is down \u2014\u00a0something he partly attributed to a declining birthrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have enrollment issues. And it\u2019s not just about taking kids from charters. There\u2019s less kids coming,\u201d Bernier said. \u201cAll these things are starting to pile on your superintendent, and he\u2019s trying to figure out a way to navigate through this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mater Academy notices invalid<\/p>\n

A South Florida charter school company notified Duval Schools too soon of its plan to open more than two dozen schools<\/a> within district buildings, a district spokesperson tells Jacksonville Today.<\/p>\n

Mater Academy sent 25 notices to Duval \u2014 as well as dozens more to other districts in the state \u2014\u00a0in early October, but Duval says it \u201cwill not be able to accept any notices\u201d until next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new rule prohibits notices from being submitted until 14 days after it takes effect, which was Oct. 28,\u201d spokesperson Laureen Ricks wrote in an email. \u201cThat means we won\u2019t begin accepting notices until Nov. 11.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing preventing Mater Academy from submitting new notices after that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mater Academy\u2019s invalid notices said it plans to open what are called Schools of Hope \u2014 a special category of publicly funded, privately operated charter schools intended to serve areas with struggling traditional public schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Updates to the Schools of Hope program the state Legislature passed this year now require districts to allow Schools of Hope to open within district-owned buildings \u2014\u00a0even those currently in use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Noting the district is \u201calready suffering financially<\/a>,\u201d one town hall attendee asked Bernier, \u201cIf a school is co-habitating with us, paying no bills, and they are filling up the school \u2014\u00a0financially, how is that sustainable for our school system? It would be different if those bodies brought money to the district, but it doesn\u2019t look like that\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernier did not mention Mater Academy by name Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bernier said the law allows districts to project enrollment one year at a time, and so could in theory adjust co-located schools\u2019 enrollment or location based on expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of details in this that have to be worked through,\u201d Bernier said. \u201cAnd I think\u2026raising those questions in a calm demeanor, asking, \u201cHave you thought this through? What does it mean when a school building gets occupied and we\u2019re trying to recruit more kids back to it but now we don\u2019t have the seats to offer them if they choose to come?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attendees asked him how the Schools of Hope program changes will affect Duval. Many of the buildings Mater Academy identified for its co-located schools are in District 5 with Riverside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a school building has capacity\u2026then the school district must, according to the way the law is written right at this moment, if a charter school applies for that space, we must provide space within that school building to co-locate,\u201d Bernier said. \u201cThey pay no rent, they pay no public utilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the crowd that the legislation doesn\u2019t take effect until 2027 \u2014\u00a0something Bernier said buys the district time to convince state lawmakers to change the new rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s a reality. It\u2019s not real yet here, but it is coming, and our team is working on it,\u201d Bernier said. \u201cWe are working quietly because we always think that\u2019s the best way to do it for us. Quietly with our (state legislative) delegation.\u201d<\/p>\n

District 5 School Board rep Reggie Blount said he has \u201chad some conversations\u201d with some legislators about the changes and found \u201csome of them weren\u2019t aware how complicated the problem would be, how problematic it would be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would encourage you to (contact)\u2026Angie Nixon, Kim Daniels, Tracie Davis, Kiyan Michael, Wyman Duggan\u2026Clay Yarborough,\u201d Blount said. \u201cThese are some of your state legislators that you might want to give a call, because hearing from the public, not just us, but hearing from the public does open their ears when you\u2019re talking about your schools, you\u2019re talking about your concerns about these organizations, these companies coming in and using public school spaces.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bernier said the district would \u201cfind out some answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201dThis thing came late in the session. It came as part of a larger big bill and we\u2019re hopeful that they\u2019ll listen,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duval school district officials are \u201chaving meetings\u201d with members of the state legislative delegation and will travel to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-33713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33713","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=33713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}