Miami-Dade’s new charter-school system skips voters — and accountability | Opinion

Florida has found a way to keep the Miami-Dade School Board — and by extension, voters — out of the process of approving charter schools, even though tax dollars are funding these schools. Starting in Miami-Dade as early as next spring, a new system will shift responsibility away from elected officials — who can be held accountable at the ballot box — and give it to political appointees.

It’s an increasingly common move by Florida leaders: to take away power from local communities on important decisions. The desired outcome, in this case, appears to be to bypass any community objections to the increased privatization of the state’s public education system.

Charter schools are publicly funded, and by law, are considered public schools even though they’re run by private operators. In the past, elected members of local school boards districts have had the power to authorize them. That is now changing.

As WLRN reported this week, Miami Dade College is going to begin authorizing new charter schools, starting as soon as March. Instead of the nation’s third-largest school district making the decision, WLRN reported, applications will go first to a “Charter Advisory Board” and then to the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees, an unelected board of individuals appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Two of those appointees, Roberto Alonso and Mary Blanco, have also been elected to the School Board.

Charter schools serve a growing role in public education, and many parents have opted for them over traditional public schools. It’s a decision that must be respected, and many school board members acknowledge that and champion school choice. But charter education is also a big business in Florida, and giving up authority over it opens the door for waste and potential conflicts of interest. That’s always a risk no matter who is making those decisions, but, with school boards, voters can at least hold them accountable.

It’s not lost on us that the chair of the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees, Michael Bileca, owns a charter-school company. Former Sen. Manny Diaz, Jr., R-Hialeah, who sponsored bills that created a pathway for this new system, has had deep professional ties to the industry, too. Diaz later became Florida’s commissioner of education and, under his leadership, the state Board of Education in 2022 voted to give MDC power over charter-school authorizations, WLRN reported.

It’s unclear whether this change is even legal. The Florida Constitution is very specific that “the school board shall operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district.” In 2008, an appeals court found a similar effort to bypass local school districts unconstitutional: The Florida Schools of Excellence Commission directly authorized and oversaw charter schools across the state. The court found that it created “a parallel system of free public education,” WLRN reported.

The ruling was never appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which has drastically changed since 2008. Today, DeSantis has appointed almost all its justices, which could guarantee a favorable ruling for the new system if it ever goes before the state’s highest court.

We must also question why there was a desire in the first place to remove the authority to approve charter schools from the Miami-Dade School Board, which did not deny a single application from a charter school between 2019 and 2023, according to WLRN.

Florida lawmakers seem to have no problem with the idea that charter schools should be allowed to absorb more resources in public education. A new law, for example, allows the schools to move into space considered underutilized in public schools while the local district pays for many of the costs. So is the state trying, again, to build “a parallel system of free public education” while keeping school districts and voters at arm’s length?

The expansion and authorization of charter schools should be done out in the open. Elected education officials should be the ones making the decisions, not gubernatorial appointees. Concentrating power in an appointed board, out of reach of voters, isn’t about improving the process or education — it’s about consolidating power. If voters no longer have a say, the constitutional promise of public education becomes dictated by private interests and beholden to political whims.