Sarasota, Manatee deny charter co-location bids, potentially leaving fate to state

Sarasota and Manatee counties’ school districts have shut the door on Schools of Hope charter operators seeking space inside public campuses—for now.

Both districts denied the Nov. 11 requests made by Mater Academy and Somerset Academy to co-locate inside four schools: Emma E. Booker Elementary and Brookside Middle in Sarasota and the Sara Scott Harllee Center and Lincoln Memorial Middle in Manatee.

The requests were among nearly 700 filed statewide since last month by charter operators under the state’s newly expanded Schools of Hope law, according to the Florida Policy Institute.

In their denial letters, obtained through a public records request by Suncoast Searchlight, the districts argued the plans were impractical, citing a variety of reasons for this, including lack of available space to accommodate charter students, lack of required infrastructure needed to support certain student populations and the operators’ failure to meet state requirements about how they would serve students from persistently low-performing schools. 

Sarasota County additionally noted in its denials the recently approved repurposing of several campus buildings that allowed it to reduce those schools’ student capacities, leaving no room for charters. 

Sarasota also denied Somerset outright because it’s not an approved Schools of Hope operator; Manatee did not respond to Somerset at all for the same reason.

Neither district proposed alternative facilities in lieu of the ones eyed by the entities.

But the denials could be reversed. 

Under state Department of Education rules, either party can seek redress from the agency in cases of disputes, asking that a special magistrate be appointed.The quasi-judicial process would give both the districts and the charter schools a chance to make their case, with the magistrate recommending how to move forward. That recommendation would then be voted on by the state Board of Education.

The Department of Education did not respond to questions emailed by Suncoast Searchlight about whether the charter operators had submitted such a request. Neither charter school responded to emails seeking comment about the local denials.

Sarasota School Board Member Tom Edwards told Suncoast Searchlight that he does not believe a special magistrate has been requested or appointed. Jamie Carson, director of communications for Manatee County schools, also said she was unaware of an appointment.

All of this is unfolding under a major shift in Florida education policy. A controversial rewrite of the state’s 2017 Schools of Hope law—pushed through by the Legislature earlier this year—no longer limits charter school operators from operating in chronically struggling campuses. 

Instead, it opens nearly every public school in the state with available space to potential co-location and requires districts to shoulder much of the operational costs, from transportation to custodial services. The expansion has ignited a fierce debate over who controls public school space—local districts or Tallahassee.

Edwards said the Schools of Hope legislation has a silver lining in that parents, alarmed by its impact, have become more engaged with the public education system.

“Parents are fired up and asking the right questions,” he said. “All these questions that I’ve been asking for the past five years, finally parents are understanding.”

Both Somerset and Mater have been linked to Academica, a major for-profit management company that works with more than 200 charter schools around the country, according to Academica’s website.

Academica said on its website that it has sent “hundreds of notices” but only plans to open a “handful of schools for the 2027-28 school year.”

Holly Bullard, chief strategy officer at the Florida Policy Institute and the parent of a student in the Sarasota school district, called the move “disruptive and disrespectful.” 

“How many hours of staff time and legal time have been spent on these notices for what Academica has admitted is a bluff,” she told Suncoast Searchlight.

Bullard said she was happy to hear that local school districts filed objections and that she has been impressed by Sarasota’s response.

“These are school districts calling their bluff,” she said of the local objections. “I think that’s a strong response from a district that’s been two steps ahead.”

Manatee and Sarasota’s objections

Sarasota Superintendent Terry Connor wrote the denial letters for his district; attorney Kevin W. Pendley wrote the ones for Manatee.

Both cited “material impracticability.” The state rules on the Schools of Hope legislation requires a district to base its objections on that term.

Here’s a breakdown of the reasons the districts objected to co-location at each school:

• Emma E. Booker Elementary: Both charter school operators misspelled Booker as “Brooker” in the building notices, with the district’s response noting that it does not operate such a school. The district also objected on grounds that, if the operators indeed meant Booker, the Department of Education has approved plans to repurpose buildings on the campus leaving fewer student stations than the number the charter had planned to use.
• Brookside Middle: The district noted that the operators requested more student stations than a reconfigured Brookside has available and that their notices did not include required information about the what type of students it would serve in low-performing schools or students residing in a Florida Opportunity zone. It also said that Brookside is not set up to handle younger children, lacking appropriately sized toilets and sinks among other state requirements for K-3 students. The charters had planned to expand the grade levels offered at the middle school to K-8.
• Sara Scott Harllee Center: The district said the operator did not identify a persistently low-performing school that it would serve, leaving the district unable to evaluate the request for co-location. The district also said it will redistrict its schools by early next year, so the number of available student stations the charter schools used to select Harllee would be outdated by the time the charter planned to open in 2027-2028. The school also houses many district-wide services that would be disrupted by co-location of a charter school. Those services include classrooms for students with exceptional needs, a teenage pregnancy program, early Head Start programs and a professional crisis management training facility. The school also launched this year its Soar in 4 laboratory that focuses on early childhood learning.
• Lincoln Memorial Middle:  The district expressed similar concerns at Lincoln regarding the charter school not meeting state requirements for co-location and the district’s plans to redistrict having a similar impact on available space at Lincoln.The district also pointed to disruption in district-wide services located on the campus — such as the Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resources System office, Turning Points Resources Family Navigation Program and Take Stock in Children offices. The charter’s plans would also turn the middle school into a K-8, which the district said would “pose safety and security concerns.”

Carson, the director of communications for the Manatee County Schools, said reports used by Schools of Hope charter operators that show both Harllee and Lincoln as underutilized don’t account for the additional district-wide services housed on those campuses. 

She also stressed the district was not taking an adversarial approach to the new law and was working with the Department of Education to update its capacity figures to more closely reflect how its campuses have been used. 

“It’s important for them to understand how the space is being utilized because it’s not vacant,” she said. “There isn’t capacity for them to use.”

This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.