A House Education panel has sent a plan to the chamber floor revamping how much districts can spend on school construction. The move comes over the objections of Superintendents.
Superintendents, and the Florida Association of District Superintendents, has pushed back for years against proposals requiring them to share a portion of locally-generated building funds with charter schools. But Miami Republican Rep. Erik Fresen says those are tax dollars too.
He says the argument against the proposal is, "a bastardization of their property taxes to have some of those…go back to the school they’re kids attend. It’s a disconnect in logic as far as what the purpose of raising a local tax dollar is for the education in a public setting for their kids.”
Fresen and the Superintendents are clashing over a report that Fresen says, shows districts spent over a billion dollars more on construction than state spending caps allow. The Senate has a similar bill without the charter school language.
