Academica Enters Florida’s Voucher Gold Rush

ByAccountabaloney

Dear readers,

I’ve had to step away from the keyboard for a bit while dealing with a re-election campaign. (Honestly, I’m still recovering from the last one… but here we go again.)

Today, though, I felt compelled to write after reading Tampa Bay Times reporter Jeff Solochek’s  “The Education Gradebook” post.

“The big story: A new funding organization with ties to public charter school company Academica has entered the $3.9 billion market for school choice vouchers.

The AltaVia Foundation won State Board of Education approval Thursday to serve as a scholarship funding organization and administer the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, Family Empowerment Scholarship and New Worlds Scholarship Accounts.”

Academica is Florida’s largest (and arguably most politically connected) corporate charter school network. Over the years, the company has amassed a substantial real estate empire funded through public education dollars.

A 2011 Miami Herald investigation, “Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm,” revealed that the Zulueta brothers — real estate developers who built their first charter school in 1997 — controlled more than $115 million in South Florida real estate through dozens of affiliated companies. Much of that property was exempt from taxes as “public schools” while simultaneously generating rental income from charter schools managed by Academica.

And that was in 2011.

At the time, Academica managed roughly 100–120 charter schools. Today, the organization reports more than 200 affiliated schools and institutions, while South Florida real estate values have roughly doubled — or more — since that earlier reporting.

Now, Academica appears poised to enter another publicly funded education market: school vouchers.

According to reporting, AltaVia expects to distribute approximately $178 million in scholarships annually by its third year of operation. Scholarship Funding Organizations are permitted to retain up to 3% for administrative costs.

More from Solochek:

“AltaVia was formed as a nonprofit in 2024 with the mission to “expand K-12 educational opportunity for low- and moderate-income families by pairing need-based scholarships.

The registered agent of the nonprofit is listed on LinkedIn as corporate counsel at Academica, a company that runs public charter schools through networks including Somerset and Mater Academy. 

Its president, Judith Marty, is currently president of the Academica-affiliated Doral College and former chief academic officer at Mater Academy. Its vice president Bernardo Montero, is listed as special adviser to Marty at Doral and Somerset Academy Inc. president.”

Academica also featured prominently in the 2021 Network for Public Education report “Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain,” which documented examples of self-dealing, excessive management fees, and real estate arrangements involving for-profit charter operators.

And now, Academica has entered the voucher funding business.

That raises important questions.

Will charter operators affiliated with Scholarship Funding Organizations begin converting publicly funded charter schools into private schools funded primarily through vouchers administered by their affiliated SFOs?

Will private corporations like Academica eventually profit simultaneously from school management fees, real estate transactions, and voucher administration — all on the taxpayers’ dime?

Will Florida policymakers, who created this marketplace, stop to ask where all of this ultimately leads? Or where the potential for grift ends?

These are questions worth watching carefully.

While I’m on the campaign trail, I hope others will keep paying attention.

I’ll see you back here after the August election.

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