Much Ado About Something
What the State Won’t Tell You About the Schools of Hope Co-Location Scheme
A brief note:
Accountabaloney is heading off the grid for an adventure vacation and will return in late January. When I’m back, I’ll be diving straight into the fresh batch of accountabaloney generated by the opening of Florida’s 2026 Legislative Session on January 13.
In the meantime, public education advocates should keep the pressure on. That means demanding real accountability in response to the shocking FLDOE voucher audit; supporting the Auditor General’s recommendation to move voucher funding into a separate silo, as proposed in Sen. Gaetz’s SB 318 (link); backing Sen. Simon’s common-sense deregulation bill, SB 320 (link); and insisting on guardrails for the reckless Schools of Hope charter school co-location giveaway of public school buildings.
Call and write your lawmakers. Speak up at school board meetings. Make sure they know you’re paying attention.
And make no mistake, Tallahassee is hearing the noise.
Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas recently complained:
“Instead of embracing innovation by identifying how co-location could be beneficial to students, all I hear is complaint after complaint, protest after protest.”
Good. Keep it up.
Beware the Gaslighting
State leaders want Floridians to believe the controversy surrounding Schools of Hope, charter schools co-locating rent-free inside traditional public schools, is overblown. They frame it as nothing more than another “choice” for families trapped in failing schools.
State Board of Education Vice Chair Esther Byrd went even further, declaring:
“Schools of Hope wouldn’t be necessary if our public school system had done its job along the way.”
This is classic gaslighting.
Schools of Hope was not an organic reform. It was a scheme dreamed up in 2017 by then-Speaker Richard Corcoran to lure out-of-state corporate charter chains to Florida. Last session, lawmakers amended the law to allow “Hope Operators” to co-locate in underutilized public schools, rent free.
The catch? Host public schools must absorb all operational costs for the charter students, including transportation, security, maintenance, food service, and more. This is the opposite of “money follows the child.” Here, public school students subsidize the care and feeding of their charter school neighbors.
From the start, it was well known that the co-location bill was written expressly for New York’s Success Academy. Success Academy helped write the bill, while a Miami billionaire poured money into lobbying efforts to ensure its passage. The bill became a legislative priority for both Governor DeSantis and Speaker Daniel Perez, perhaps the only thing they agreed on last session. The legislation was never heard in the Senate. Instead, it was quietly inserted into the budget at the last minute and rushed into law. Over the summer, the Florida Department of Education fast-tracked rulemaking and adopted a “first come, first served” approach that triggered a feeding frenzy.
By fall, nearly 700 co-location requests targeted almost 500 public schools across at least 22 districts, yet only about 60 of those schools were persistently low-performing.
The Sales Pitch and the Reality
In a November 30 op-ed, Commissioner Kamoutsas defended the policy, claiming co-location would deliver “educational excellence and fiscal responsibility.” He argued that shared campuses reduce waste and improve efficiency.
Except they don’t, because while resources are shared, costs are not.
A week later, at the FSBA Annual Joint Conference, Kamoutsas told conservative school board members to fall in line. Support for Schools of Hope, he implied, is now a loyalty test. He accused districts of hiding behind “technicalities,” threatened to send state cost-cutting teams into districts, and floated the idea of shutting down entire school systems that failed to perform. He also promised that despite the flood of applications, only a handful of Schools of Hope would actually co-locate in 2027–28. That reassurance quickly became the official talking point.
On December 10, Governor DeSantis echoed it at an Orlando press conference, openly naming Success Academy as his preferred operator. He reassured Floridians that “most people” wouldn’t notice any impact, because these schools would be placed in struggling neighborhoods “where most people would never go.” Wealthier communities, he said, would be spared.
He even suggested co-location would relieve districts of the “burden” of educating certain students.
Let’s be clear. Districts would be relieved of funding, not responsibility. Taxpayers statewide would still foot the bill for the charter school giveaway, whether they live in a neighborhood DeSantis would feel comfortable visiting, or not.
“Much Ado About Nothing”?
Vice Chair Byrd took to social media to dismiss the backlash as “much ado about nothing,” accusing “education cartels,” liberal interests, and even conservative school board members of spreading misinformation. Ironically, some of the most critical responses came from conservative board members in her own district, who called the law poorly written and dangerously rushed.
Even Jeb Bush, Florida’s original champion of charter expansion, weighed in, writing two Miami Herald op-eds (here and here). In both, he praised Schools of Hope as bold and innovative, emphasizing that school buildings belong to taxpayers, not districts. What he failed to mention, again, was the complete lack of cost sharing and the diversion of public funding to corporate entities.
Why This Matters
Schools of Hope co-location shifts costs, concentrates disruption in vulnerable communities, and strips local school boards of authority, all while insulating the neighborhoods and families with the most resources. That’s not innovation. It’s the extraction of resources from public schools for the benefit of charter corporations.
Floridians should demand better. Lawmakers must pause implementation, fix the law, require true cost sharing, and restore transparency and local control. School board members, conservative and progressive alike, should continue to speak up, despite the pressure to stay quiet.
And citizens must keep doing exactly what Commissioner Kamoutsas dislikes most: complaining, protesting, questioning, and refusing to be gaslit.
Accountabaloney may be briefly off the grid, but this fight is not. I’ll be back in mid-January, ready to rejoin it, and to hold Florida’s leaders accountable for what happens next.
P.S. Happy New Year