House finance committee advances legislation to make it easier for public charter schools to access vacant buildings

Members of the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill Tuesday that’s designed to make it easier for public charter schools to access vacant school buildings.The bill would require local school districts that have public charter schools in them to provide a list of vacant and underutilized buildings on an annual basis.  Under the bill, school districts would additionally be required to make those properties available to public charter schools at a fair market value and give charters a first right of refusal for either purchase or lease.The House committee initially intended to vote on the legislation last month but postponed the vote to amend it and appease a concern raised by some Democratic lawmakers.In recent weeks they’ve argued, without evidence, that charter leaders might use the legislation to buy and sell property.Representative Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, was among them.“A charter can come in and purchase the property, use it for educational purposes for one month and then sell the property if they want to, to whoever they want to sell the property to for a profit,” asked Parkinson in a committee meeting last month.Bill sponsor Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, agreed to amend the legislation to provide school districts with the same right of first refusal to buy back purchased properties, if public charter schools decide to sell them.Williams’ legislation is considered to be among the most important this session for public charter schools that are facing a growing “facilities challenge.”It’s believed current state funding only meets 50 percent of charter facility needs statewide and that gap disproportionately impacts economically disadvantaged and students of color because charters serve a higher percents of those students.Representative Williams told committee members Tuesday that his legislation will help public charter schools overcome this challenge and provide students with better school facilities.“Charter school students are public school students, they receive public dollars, however those dollars are not able to be utilized to fund the construction, maintenance of those schools,” said bill sponsor Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville. “They use those dollars in order to do that themselves as they do it the old-fashioned way, with bootstraps.”The legislation has already passed the Senate.  It could go to the full House for a vote as early as next week.