- March 20, 2025
A bill filed in the Florida House in early February could force school districts to give up land — and give charter schools first dibs.
As members of the Volusia County School Board are preparing to travel to Tallahassee next week to speak with legislators, School Board Chair Jamie Haynes highlighted a few bills to watch during her final comments at the board's meeting on Tuesday, March 10. Among them, House Bill 443.
The bill, filed by Rep. John Snyder, R-Stuart, proposes changes to charter school provisions, including prohibitions for the school's sponsoring entity on imposing some limitations, allowing charter schools to assign their charters to another governing board, and giving charter schools a right of first refusal for any property the school district sells.
VCS and its School Board currently sponsors six charter schools in the county.
This is a bill, Haynes said, to which everyone should be paying attention.
"I believe in choice and that parents should have choice," she said. "I don't know that I ever thought we would be at this point with choice."
But, the bill has "a lot of pieces and parts" put together, she said. Public schools can transition into charters in two ways: Either students' parents of the school hold a public vote to do so, with no vote granted to the district or school faculty, or, a municipality can convert a public school within their city limits into a charter school.
In late February, The Gainesville Sun reported that Florida Department of Education's Charter School Review Commission had approved the conversion of Newberry Elementary School into a public charter school beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, despite concerns from Alachua County Public Schools.
"We need to be well aware that that is something that could happen here," Haynes said.
And if HB 443 passes, the district may have to surplus property.
If a school district has reported declining enrollment for five years, the bill dictates unused property must be sold — and that charter schools would get the first right of refusal.
"If this passes, they say we can't land bank, which means we have to give those properties up," Hayne said.
School Board member Donna Brosemer said that while the district doesn't purchase land as an asset, land rarely loses value.
"Given the fact that the state is always arguing with us about how much they're going to fund, it's almost like money in the bank to have those assets available to us," Brosemer said. "And it seems to me that's an argument we could make to legislators to allow us to hang on to those assets until the market is ready for us to sell them, or until our need arises, and that helps us to enhance our own funding without looking to the state for anything additional."
The House held a first reading of the bill on March 4, and Haynes said legislators couldn't answer when a district would be allowed to buy land, nor who would approve the purchase.
"Yes, there's areas out there where enrollment has declined in Volusia County, but there's areas that are growing where enrollment has continued to grow and to take away the local authority for us to know when and where we need a school — and when we should hold on to a piece of property because it's a good price versus giving it up — should be at the local [level] and not, in my opinion, be decided by the state," Haynes said.
Haynes also mentioned two other notable bills filed: House Bill 597, which allows the school district to purchase and administer glucagon to students for emergency diabetes care, and House Bill 1213, revising provisions for student transportation requirements and hazardous walking conditions.
