Florida’s top education official says public school closures a tradeoff for school choice
Politico | By Andrew Atterbury | May 29, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida’s top education official downplayed the sizable enrollment declines plaguing some of the largest school districts in the state on Wednesday, labeling potential campus closures as a motivation for traditional public schools to “innovate and provide programming that is attractive to parents.”
The comments from Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. come after POLITICO’s reporting about the growing popularity of the state’s school choice programs — and the financial squeeze that subsequently placed on traditional public schools. School districts in Broward, Duval and Miami-Dade counties have enrolled some 53,000 fewer students since 2019-20, a drop that is spurring local leaders to consider closing and repurposing campuses to save money.
“You’ve seen these reports of some districts having to close schools — that’s how this works,” Diaz said during a state Board of Education meeting in Miami. “Districts have to make decisions. And sometimes these districts in the past have made decisions that have kicked the can down the road and now have to make harder decisions. But what they need to do is continue to innovate and provide programming that is attractive to parents so, on that open competition, they have the best option for those parents to choose.”
School choice is booming in Florida, with thousands more families flocking to charter schools, home schooling and using a state-funded scholarship for private schooling. This is by design of the state’s Republican leaders, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, who have expanded these policies in recent years — namely by opening scholarships to all students regardless of family income in 2023.
But as these programs explode, some traditional public schools are struggling to fill seats.
Broward County, for example, has more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, leading school officials to consider closing eight schools in the next two years. Closing one campus could save the district between $1.8 million to $4.3 million, according to a new presentation on Wednesday from the district.
Education leaders fear the long-term implications of school closures, like students being bused further away to a new campus and communities losing schools that have served them for generations.
“Here we saw today, the commissioner of education basically celebrating that public schools are being closed. That’s not OK,” Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association teachers union, told reporters after Wednesday’s board meeting.
For the DeSantis administration and Florida, though, the philosophy is that parents can choose the best schooling method for their child and get state funding to do so, Diaz said.
“It’s not our job here, or in the Legislature, or the governor, to choose which setting these parents choose,” Diaz, a former Republican lawmaker, told the state board Wednesday. “It is our job to provide them, and we are doing that. Districts have the opportunity in these situations where they’re having to deal with closures to innovate.”
In reaction to the likely school closures to come, DeSantis officials noted that “good products flourish and bad products get replaced,” a sentiment shared by the state board.
“That’s going to cause disruption, and that in many ways can be a good thing because it’s forcing everyone to rethink how we’re delivering education,” Ben Gibson, chair of the state Board of Education, said about parents having more choices.
