At the end of the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers inserted language into the General Appropriations Act that expanded the boundaries in which Schools of Hope can operate to allow private operators rent-free access to public school facilities, including athletic fields, libraries, and cafeterias.[1] Currently, Florida’s Department of Education (FLDOE) is considering a rule to implement the changes. This blog explores FLDOE’s proposed rule and what it would mean for public schools across Florida.
Overview
Prior to 2025, Schools of Hope (SOH) operators — a special category of charter schools created in 2017 to serve students in “persistently low performing” (PLP) schools — had to be located within the attendance zone of PLP schools. When the SOH program was created, about 90 schools from 24 school districts across Florida were considered PLP. Now, with the passage of Senate Bill (SB) 2510 in 2025, SOH operators can co-locate in public schools across Florida. This is because SB 2510 changed the definition of PLP schools and made it so that operators can also serve students living in Opportunity Zones, or federally designated “distressed areas” created to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors. Schools of Hope are not limited to schools in Opportunity Zones or PLPs. A SOH operator can choose from "suitable" schools within five miles of an Opportunity Zones or PLP. In Florida, there are 427 such zones, at least one in every county, which vastly increases the reach of SOH operators. SB 2510 also requires that the school districts foot the bill for any costs, including routine maintenance, custodial fees, and transportation.
The Role of Administrative Rules
When bills are passed, the legislation does not always include all the details needed to implement the new law. The Legislature may also direct executive agencies, in this case the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), to write administrative rules which provide added detail, specificity, and guidance on how the law is to be implemented. SB 2510 included such a provision, and two rounds of administrative rulemaking have occurred since July 1, 2025. The first concluded in October 2025. The second round of rulemaking is now in process. The FLDOE is currently accepting comment on the proposed rule, and on February 20, 2026, the Florida Board of Education (FLBOE) will meet to finalize it. Public comment becomes part of the official record and is an important way to provide feedback to the proposed rules. If approved by the FLBOE, the rules will go into effect 20 days afterwards.
Proposed Rule Changes
Clarifying Utilization Terms
SB 2510 established that “underutilized” schools could be taken over by private SOH operators, yet it did not define the term. Under the proposed rule, a “fully used” facility would be a school that is “using 90 percent or more of its student stations (desks).” [2] The proposed rule, unlike the previous one, would also develop a formula to measure “Facility Utilization Rate” (FUR), which looks at the total number of students enrolled,[3] student stations (desks) in a school, and the number of students with disabilities who require additional instruction space to support their learning. [4] Based on these new proposed requirements, a school would be eligible for “co-location” if their FUR is no more than 75 percent or has a surplus of 400 student stations, and the school is more than four years old.
Why this matters — The definition of “vacant, underused, or surplus” was not defined in the rule promulgated in October 2025, so the proposed clarification of terms is important. However, the proposed rule would not address several fundamental issues concerning timeliness and accuracy of student counts, and it fails to account for future population growth and mobility data. The issues are tied to the proposed rule’s reliance on the Florida Inventory of School Houses (FISH) report. Since the FLDOE publishes the FISH report annually, its findings do not account for changes in between publications, meaning that SOH operators may be sending notices to co-locate based on outdated information. To elaborate, factors such as hurricanes can impact school capacity after the FLDOE publishes the FISH report.
Evaluating Prospective SOH operators
Based on the original rules promulgated in 2018, prospective SOH operators must apply to the State Board of Education and meet at least one of the following criteria: receive federal charter school funding (either a U.S. Department of Education Charter School Program grant or an award from the National Fund of the Charter School Growth Fund) or be selected by a district school board to turn around the performance of a low-performing public school. The proposed rule would add an additional set of criteria to become a SOH operator. In addition to the already defined requirements, a prospective SOH operator would have to meet the following criteria:
- The achievement of its students would have to exceed that of the districts and states in which it operates
- Average college attendance of all the operator’s high schools would have to exceed that of the district and state in which it operates
- The percent of students served that are eligible for Free and Reduced meals under the National School Lunch Program would have to exceed 70 percent at all the operator’s schools at the time of application
- The operator would have to be in good standing in the state that would be authorizing the School of Hope
- There would have to be no material misstatements and “ongoing concerns” in the operator’s financial audits
Why this matters — The proposed rule would add criteria to evaluate both student performance and fiscal soundness of the prospective SOH operator, which would require more stringent review.
Facility Selection, Space Allocation, and Use
After lawmakers passed SB 2510, SOH operators sent 690 “building notices” declaring an intention to co-locate to over 450 schools across 22 school districts. Three FLDOE designated operators sent building notices: KIPP, Mater Academy, and Success Academy. Letters were also received from two other operators that have not been officially designated as SOH operators by FLDOE — Bridgeprep Academy and Somerset Academy. Under the current rule, SOH operators can send as many notices to co-locate as they want and must send a building notice to the pertinent school district at least one year and no more than two years prior to the planned opening of the School of Hope. The proposed rule would require SOH operators to send a building notice to the FLDOE in addition to the school district. Also, the proposed rule would limit the number of building notices SOH operators can send to no more than five in a 12-month period statewide.
Why this matters — Under the current rules, SOH operators can send as many building notices as they want, leading to administrative costs for both FLDOE and school districts. The proposed rule would curtail these issues by limiting building notices to five in a 12-month period. However, the proposed rule would not offer districts a long enough window to fully evaluate the proposals, nor would the proposed rule allow public and community participation in the process, since the time to review and respond to building notices remains unchanged at 20 days.
Mutual Management Plan (New Proposed Section in Code)
The issue of private SOH operators occupying public schools aside, one of the chief issues with the SOH program is that the school districts are currently required to provide whatever support services the private operators need, including nursing services, transportation, and maintenance. The school districts have to bear the full costs of these services. The districts must also figure out how to consolidate their classroom space to allow both the public-school population and the SOH operators access to contiguous space. Two schools within a single building would likely require two bell schedules, and scheduling common spaces like cafeterias, libraries, and ball fields would also need to be developed. To address the inequities in financial and administrative burden, the proposed rule would require the district and SOH operator to develop a “mutual management plan” for co-location. According to the proposed rule, districts may charge “incremental costs” to the SOH operator for facility-related costs as well as custodial costs, nursing costs, or food-related services.[5] SOH operators in turn would have to remit any state allocations for those specific services to the district.
Why this matters — Florida public schools are already underfunded relative to other states. Under the proposed rule, school districts would not have to bear the full financial burden of SOH co-location; however, they would bear the brunt of “incremental” costs, such as maintenance. The School of Hope would only have to pay for incremental costs on days it is open but the district school is not. Throughout the rest of the school year, when both schools are open, the SOH operator would not pay any of these costs (e.g., staffing costs and food-related costs), even though they benefit from them the whole year. While the proposed rule is an improvement, it still would not require SOH operators to bear full costs, and it would do nothing to address the very short timelines that thwart public and community input into the process.
Proposed Administrative Rule Would Do Little to Address the Cost Burden Inequity Between Public Schools and Schools of Hope
The proposed rule represents only incremental change to a policy that does not serve Florida’s public interest. It would not address school districts’ ability to recoup the full costs of the services it provides to an entity over which it has no authority. Additionally, the rule would not provide additional opportunities for schools and communities to offer input into to the highly abbreviated timelines in SB 2510.
Notes
[1] About Schools of Hope - Florida has had charter schools since the 1990s. While charters are considered public schools, they receive more flexibility and less accountability than traditional neighborhood public schools. Schools of Hope are a special type of charter schools, and receive even more flexibilities than regular charters, including no requirement for employing certified teachers, access to additional funding and support from the Florida Department of Education’s Schools of Hope Program and access to a revolving loan program. Currently there are seven designated SOH operators, most with ties to national for-profit charter school companies. Prior to the 2025-26 school years, these operators were selected to serve students in the attendance zone of persistently low performing schools or within five miles of such school and is Title I eligible.
[2] These are seats and reflects the square footage needed to offer instructional programming. The number of student stations vary by grade level, special education, clinical spaces, etc. Media centers, auditoriums, and cafeterias are not included in the student station assignment. (f.s. 1013.03)
[3] This is the capital outlay full-time equivalent.
[4] Those with matrix scores Level IV or V.
[5] Incremental costs are those costs above and beyond what the school district would have to pay for a public student occupying that space. The district must specify the methodology and documentation to make the calculation of incremental costs on request and justify that the costs are actual and reasonable [(6)(c)1d].
