Gaetz Returns to the Florida Senate And Files Some Problematic Bills

No. Not that guy. His father.

Senator Don Gaetz is a businessman who made a fortune founding VITAS Healthcare, the nation’s largest single-source provider of end-of-life care, which he sold for nearly half a million dollars in 2004. In 1997, Gaetz was elected to the Okaloosa School Board where he served for two terms. In 2000, Gaetz opted to run for Okaloosa County superintendent of schools and was re-elected in 2004. In 2006, Gaetz left the school district to run for state Senate, where he served until 2016 and was Senate president from 2012 to 2014. During his first term in the Senate, Gaetz served as Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and he remained involved in education issues throughout his tenure. When Gaetz’s successor, Doug Broxson, termed out of the Florida Senate, he announced his candidacy for the office and was re-elected in November 2024. He has been appointed to both the Appropriations Committee on Pre-K – 12 Education  and Education Pre-K – 12 committees.

Senator Gaetz got right back to work.

Among his first actions, were signing on to two problematic bills: SB90 and SB140.

SB90: Revoking in-state tuition for Florida’s undocumented high school graduates.

Sen. Gaetz has signed on to co-sponsor newly-elected Senator Randy Fine’s SB90. If you don’t know who Randy Fine is you probably will soon – he is running for the U.S. Congressional seat (District 6) vacated by Mike Waltz, who was tapped by President-elect Trump to serve as his National Security Advisor. Fine has carried a lot of “not-so-fine” bills, is NOT a fan of public schools or school boards and he says/tweets some remarkably offensive? things.

SB90 repeals 2014’s HB 851, a law which allowed in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants who attended and graduated from a Florida high school for at least 3 consecutive years. SB90 would reverse the policy which was championed 10 years ago by then-state Rep. Jeanette Nuñez, now DeSantis’ Lieutenant Governor and signed by then-Governor, now-U.S. Senator Rick Scott. At the time, Nunez said that the measure supported “upward mobility” for young adults on whom the state had already spent “tens of thousands of dollars to educate in public schools,” adding that it made “no sense” to hold these students down.

Fine said, in a press release, “It is immoral that Americans from the other 49 states pay more to attend Florida’s colleges and universities than illegal immigrants. And it is appalling that we ask Floridians to pay $45 million a year to facilitate it.” {For the record, Florida’s undocumented workers also pay taxes. A recent report from The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, noted that Florida had more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants who, in 2022, paid $1.8 billion in state and local taxes – that includes contributions made in business income taxes, sale and excise taxes, and property taxes paid as both homeowners and renters.)

Nunez’s 2014 bill was a priority of then-House Speaker Will Weatherford (whom DeSantis has since appointed as University of South Florida trustee) but then-Senate President Gaetz was was not a fan (nor was son, Matt Gaetz, who was serving in the Florida House). Both “Big Gaetz” and “Baby Gaetz” voted NO on Nunez’s bill, but the bill passed anyway… those were the days when biparisan bills could pass a legislative chamber without leadership support in Florida.

On Monday, DeSantis called for a special session, preparing Florida to enforce Trump’s deportation policies statewide immediately after President Trump takes office. He also threatened to FIRE public officials who do not obey Trump’s deportations and included revoking in-state tuition for undocumented migrants in his call. Fine has announced he is ready to re-file SB90 as a special session bill, saying “We must put Floridians first, and I am proud to do my part to rebalance the scales for our citizens.”

For the record, if passed, SB90 goes into effect 7/1/2026, so there is NO reason (other tha cruelty) to pass it in a special session. The bill, if passed, will impact not just current high school students, but also undocumented Florida residents currently enrolled in college – effectively pulling the rug out from under them and derailing their .

SB140: Conversion Charters and the State-Sponsored Pilfering” Of Our Public Schools.

Last year, Rep. Andrade proposed HB109, which attempted to add local municipalities to the list of entities who could apply to convert a public school to a charter school (along with a parent, teacher, principal, district school board or school advisory council) and to eliminate the requirement that such a conversion must be approved by the majority of teachers, allowing only the current parents to vote whether to approve the conversion. The bill also required that, if a district’s student population declined, the state would identify and vacant school district properties which would have to be offered for use by charter schools at no cost or converted to affordable housing.

This year, Andrade has filed a very similar bill, HB123, which is identical to SB140, filed by Gaetz. Here is what the bills propose:

Conversion Charters:

The bill limits the entities able to apply for a conversion charter to only parents of children enrolled in the school (eliminating the district school board, principals, teachers and school advisory councils).

Once again, the bill eliminates the requirement that such a conversion must be approved by the majority of teachers, allowing only the current parents to vote whether to approve the conversion.

The bill allows municipalities to create a thing called a “job engine charter” whose purpose is “to attract job-producing entities to the municipality.”

Public School Property Giveaway.

The bills add a new subsection to 1013.15 Lease, rental, and lease-purchase of educational plants, ancillary plants, and auxiliary facilities and sites which:

• Requires district school boards, submit a 5-year plan for its proposed use during a public meeting before occupying any purchased or acquired real property, a school board must submit a 5-year plan for its proposed use during a public meeting. This plan should consider factors such as enrollment growth, demographic shifts, and curriculum changes and plan must be updated annually and submitted to the Department of Education.
• Prohibits school boards from from purchasing or acquiring real property if enrollment in the school district has declined during the preceding 5 years. In such cases, the school board must dispose of any real property deemed surplus by the State Board of Education.
• Surplus real property identified by the State Board of Education must be prioritized for:
  • Conversion to affordable housing for teachers, first responders, or military service members.
  • Use as charter school facilities.
  • Development of recreational facilities by local governments.

These bills, once again, represent the “state-sponsored pilfering” of our public schools. School districts, teachers and school advisory are removed from the Charter Conversion process, leaving the decision of what to do with a community’s public school left in the hands of ONLY the parents of students attending at that point in time. As for the acquisition and use of public school property, is a district’s enrollment has declined, Tallahassee will decide what “surplus” properties the district MUST dispose of and how (or to whom) is should be disposed.

No teacher or parent will have a say. Neither will the school board, elected to make such decisions for the community. In fact the local community will have no say at all.

SB140 and HB123, take what should be a local decision – the use and/or repurposing of public assets – and hand it over to bureaucrats in Tallahassee.

When Senator Gaetz served on the Okaloosa County School Board, he campaigned for a one-cent sales tax to fund school construction and renovation, which was easily approved by the county’s voters in a 1995 special election. Gaetz celebrated its passage as “a real grass roots victory.” It was the first time a district in Florida had levied a sales tax exclusively for school construction. Now Gaetz is sponsoring a bill that will let the State, not the voters and taxpayers of Okaloosa County (or even their school board) decide the fate of those properties. Shame on him.

Last session, many individuals (including The Florida PTA, Florida Association of District School Superintendents, Miami Dade Public Schools, etc) spoke out against Andrade’s HB109, which ultimately died in the House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee and the Senate version was never heard.

This session, pay attention to SB140 and HB123 and be ready to speak out in opposition to continued “state-sponsored pilfering” of our public schools.

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This afternoon, during the Senate Education PreK-12 committee, an invited speaker from the National Accelerator of Autism Charter Schools (NAACS) suggested that surplus properties in school districts should be converted to residential facilities for adults with autism who are unable to live independently. More than 1 in 4 public charter schools shutter within five years – Why not use closed charter schools for residential facilities? Independent living facilities for adults with disabilities are probably needed in every community, but why is everyone waiting for their turn to benefit from the dismantling of our public schools.?