‘Over my dead body.’ Manatee schools prepare to battle charter takeover plans

Two Manatee County school facilities are targets in a large charter school company’s rush to take over dozens of underused schools across the state. 

Miami-based Mater Academy Inc. sent the notices to the School District of Manatee County on Wednesday, hoping to leverage the state’s “Schools of Hope” law to use the schools as “co-location” sites.

The legislation allows charter school operators to move into public campuses if the facilities have any unused space – regardless of their academic performance. The public school system would then be forced to continue paying for utilities, busing, custodial services and even meals for those new charter students — all at no cost to the charter operator.

The notices cited Lincoln Memorial Middle School and the Sara Scott Harllee Center as potential sites for charter school co-location. Three Sarasota County schools also received notices from Mater Academy, in what one Sarasota school board member dubbed a “hostile takeover.” 

Mater Academy, a nonprofit charter founded in 1998, is closely linked to Academica, a major for-profit charter management company that works with more than 200 charter schools around the country, according to state business filings and information on Academica’s website.

In statements to the media and families, the School District of Manatee County denied the validity of the notices, saying Mater Academy sent the notices prematurely. According to the district, the revised statute does not go into effect until Oct. 28, and notices can be submitted starting on Nov. 11. 

The notices give the school district 20 calendar days to respond. The district can object based on “material impracticability” and can suggest alternative underused facilities. However, Mater Academy does not need to accept the suggestion. 

At the School Board of Manatee County’s workshop on Thursday morning, Board Member Heather Felton said she is “extremely irritated” with the notices and the company targeting these schools. 

“I have several concerns,” Felton said. “This is not something that I personally am going to take lying down.”

Charter seeks Manatee public school space

The two nearly identical notices say Mater Academy would transform the Sara Scott Harllee Center and Lincoln Memorial Middle School by the 2027 school year.

Plans for the Sara Scott Harllee Center would be a charter school for grades 6-12 to accommodate 782 students within five years. Lincoln Memorial would become a charter school for 963 students in grades K-8. 

Lincoln Memorial Middle School has a long history in Manatee County. The site used to be Lincoln Memorial High School in the 1940s and was the only high school for Black students in the county until integration in 1969. 

The school later became Lincoln Middle School until 2018, when former principal Eddie Huntley pushed for the school to become a charter school. That lasted only one year before the school board terminated the charter, reclaimed the campus and voted to rename the school Lincoln Memorial Middle School. 

Since then, Lincoln Middle’s total student enrollment has mostly held steady, dipping from 468 students in the 2018/19 school year to just over 450 students this year, according to a Suncoast Searchlight analysis of state data.

School district spokesperson Jamie Carson said Lincoln Middle’s capacity is 996 students. That still leaves more than 500 empty seats for a charter operator to assume.

But she emphasized that capacity is more than just numbers. 

“There’s a lot of things happening around that school and that campus,” Carson said, highlighting that the school houses the Office of Student Assignment and partners with Turning Points, which offers rental help and assistance with other government programs. “Looking at a capacity sheet, that blueprint doesn’t tell the whole picture.” 

The school’s website touts a 15:1 student-to-faculty ratio. Lincoln Memorial Middle also operates a Medical Magnet Program, which provides students with healthcare-focused courses in topics like anatomy and physiology, sports medicine and nutrition. 

Located on Ninth Street East just north of Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, Sara Scott Harllee Middle School opened in 1974. In 2016, the school received an F grade from the state for the fourth consecutive year. The middle school closed its doors a year later and became a facility for other district programs. 

The center’s capacity is around 900 students, but Carson said enrollment numbers at this center are more “fluid” given the types of programs that it offers, including the School of Academic and Behavioral Learning Excellence, which is a short-term alternative program. 

Felton, who taught at the school in its final years, also emphasized at the workshop that the Sara Scott Harllee Center now houses several key programs for the district, including the Soar Lab, which provides “high-quality interactive learning,” according to the district website. 

“Over my dead body are they going to take that building,” Felton said.

The most outspoken critic of Mater Academy’s notices, Felton said the academy is not like the county’s “homegrown charter schools” and agreed this seems like a “hostile takeover,” noting Suncoast Searchlight’s recent article about notices sent to Sarasota County schools. 

“Our own homegrown charter schools have worked their butts off to be in this district,” Felton said. “And these companies can sweep in here, moving in without having to pay for almost anything…this is on our dime.”

“There is so much in this that has got us against a wall…we need the public to combat this,” Felton continued. “This is not about party politics. This is about protecting our kids, protecting our tax funds.” 

Board Chairman Chad Choate III was not too concerned with the notices and said the board needed to come up with a unified voice, especially when talking to the media. 

“I think we’re early in the stages here,” Choate said at the public workshop. “I think, personally, this was a fishing expedition with these letters.”

Laurie Breslin, the district’s new superintendent, told board members that the district is ready to respond. 

“On our end, we will focus on making sure we respond to any valid letter that comes in, noting the wonderful programs that we have on our campus that maybe aren’t noted,” Breslin said at the workshop. “I feel confident that we’re ready to respond as a district. I don’t want it to be construed as an emergency for Manatee County.”

Other Manatee County public schools remain at risk

A Suncoast Searchlight review of total student enrollment at individual schools throughout Manatee County shows many more public campuses that have been facing emptying classrooms for years could also be at jeopardy.

In all, 35 Manatee schools have lost some enrollment since 2013/14, the oldest data available from the state. That includes 28 schools that saw enrollment decline by at least 10% during that time.

Each of those lost students creates potential capacity that could become the next target of a charter school seeking to move in under the Schools of Hope law.

Among the campuses shedding students are R. Dan Nolan and Carlos E. Haile middle schools.  Each lost a third of their total students since 2013. That’s more than 730 seats between those two schools alone.

G.D. Rogers Garden-Bullock, Palma Sola and Jessie P. Miller elementary schools similarly saw students flock to other schools, with enrollment down more than 25% during those years. Even Manatee High School is down nearly 500 students.

Damaris Allen, executive director with the Florida nonprofit Families for Strong Public Schools, expects more notices from charter operators to come in the months ahead. Her organization has tracked the number of blanket notices to co-locate that went out statewide. So far, she said that the tally is well above 100, concentrated in areas like greater Tampa Bay and South Florida. 

Allen called the notices “deeply concerning,” noting the policy is creating chaos for districts across Florida.

“This isn’t something people want,” Allen said. “This isn’t something that they asked for. This is just taking away opportunities for our kids – and it creates a lot of instability … This is really going to be detrimental to our kids.”

Sarasota County scrambles to ward off charter notices

The same week Manatee schools received two notices, Sarasota County received three targeting Brookside Middle, Emma E. Booker Elementary and Oak Park School by the same charter school operator.

Sarasota district officials had already been working on a multi-part plan to address its underutilized schools, which included a proposal to close Wilkinson Elementary School and shift students to other campuses that had been similarly losing enrollment. 

The plan triggered widespread outrage from parents, who packed school board workshops, held their own emergency meetings and filled the inboxes of local elected officials with their complaints.

Following the notices that went out Wednesday, public schools advocates in Sarasota organized an emergency parent meeting led in part by Support Our Schools Director Carol Lerner.

Lerner said the notices had gone out all over the state with charter schools seeking vast expansion of the number of students they would serve using public school facilities, calling the charter schools “squatters.”

“There’s no way I think they can do that many schools,” said Lerner, a retired public educator. “I think part of it is a fishing expedition.”

Sarasota School Board Member Tom Edwards pushed for an emergency school board meeting Friday morning to discuss options to address Schools of Hope notices. He said the meeting was denied.

Edwards noted time was of the essence, as Sarasota would likely see more of these notices in the near future.

“We’re going to be inundated with (Schools of Hope) notices,” he said. “We’re saying that we’re giving up, that we’re OK with giving up our under-enrolled capacity.”

This report is a collaboration between Bradenton Herald and Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.