Nathan Hoffman is the Senior Legislative Director for the Foundation for Florida's Future.
The Florida Legislature adjourned its 2025 regular session on June 16, concluding an extraordinary 105-day session that stretched beyond the scheduled 60-day calendar.
It was a busy session, with lawmakers tackling many issues that are important to the state but largely unrelated to education. That said, we were nonetheless able to advance several of our key priorities while defending against continued efforts to water down student expectations, accountability and charter funding parity.
We were additionally able to maintain the state’s best-in-class private school choice program thanks to the advocacy from families and schools that would have been impacted by negative policy proposals in the legislature this year.
Florida’s Schools of Hope program, launched in 2018 under the leadership of then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran, was created to directly confront the challenges of persistently low-performing public schools.
This innovative initiative was the first of its kind in the nation, aimed at offering students in struggling schools immediate access to better educational opportunities. The program specifically targeted communities where traditional public schools had failed to achieve satisfactory academic outcomes for multiple years, inviting proven, high-performing charter school operators from out-of-state to step in and serve these students with a focus on academic excellence.
To attract top-tier charter networks, Florida established both financial and regulatory incentives through the Schools of Hope program. These included a state-backed revolving loan fund to support the construction or renovation of school facilities and an operational grant to help cover the significant costs associated with launching new schools. By lowering the financial barriers to entry and streamlining the process for expansion, the program made it easier for high-quality charter operators to serve communities most in need. The ultimate goal of the Schools of Hope program is to ensure that no student is trapped in a failing school simply because of their ZIP code.
This legislative session, lawmakers not only expanded the Schools of Hope program, but set a national precedent for addressing the problem of vacant and underutilized facilities caused by declining public school enrollment.
Specifically, policymakers established a new operating model for school districts and charter school operators alike to ensure high-performing operators under the Schools of Hope program have guaranteed access to vacant, underutilized and surplus facilities where they can either co-locate with a traditional public school or utilize the entire building.
Lawmakers also created a new supplemental funding opportunity, based on a school’s performance in delivering strong student results. Under the new law, Schools of Hope must deliver exceptional outcomes for students previously stuck in schools ranked in the bottom 10% of the state. If schools do their job extremely well, the state will reward them with additional money to expand to serve more students. This approach reflects Florida’s continued evolution toward a pure choice environment while still incentivizing quality outcomes.
Further Enhancements to the Charter School Landscape
House Bill 1105 contained many provisions we supported, including improving the charter school conversion process by removing the ability of teachers unions to veto the will of parents. The improved process will only require a favorable vote of 50% of parents with children in the school to initiate a conversion.
The legislation also allows a municipality to apply to convert a public school that has failed to achieve top grades to a “job engine” charter school that must offer career and technical education programs.
House Bill 1255 will help ease the regulatory burden on charter schools by ensuring that a local governing body may not impose or enforce any building or operational requirement that would impact student capacity or operational hours.
It also prohibits the adoption of any development or zoning requirement that is not also uniformly imposed or enforced on public schools and prohibits restrictions that would not be required for a public or private school at a location where a public or private school previously operated.
The law also requires swift approval of a charter school development application if the charter school meets the requirements of state law.
Each of these provisions will ensure that charter schools are not unfairly treated at the local level as they seek to serve students.
The legislature invested in high-quality K–2 instructional materials and enacted science-of-reading aligned policy refinements.
Specifically, House Bill 1255 requires districts to report in their reading plans how they will prioritize the placement of highly effective teachers in grades K-2. It also improves reading intervention by requiring that such interventions be provided by instructional personnel with a literacy microcredential or an endorsement in reading.
Additionally, the legislature funded the Department of Education’s efforts to create or purchase high-quality instructional materials for grades K-2.
These steps reinforce Florida’s leadership in early literacy and lay the groundwork for improved student outcomes across grade levels.
Florida lawmakers improved existing workforce readiness legislation that expands career and technical education pathways aligned with in‑demand industries, including at least $40 million for the Workforce Capitalization Incentive Grant Program, which provides funds for school districts, Florida colleges and—now—charter schools to support startup and expansion costs for programs that lead to high-value industry credentials.
The legislation also included a revamp to the state’s Money-back Guarantee program, which provides a tuition-back guarantee for any student who completes a qualifying program at a Florida College System institution and is unable to find work in that program of study within six months of graduation.
Specifically, the legislation doubles the number of programs that must be identified under the program and aligns the program requirements with that of the state’s unemployment assistance program.
These updates support students in earning credentials, entering the workforce or military with stronger preparation and keeping Florida colleges focused on outcomes.
New measures bolster Florida’s phone‑free classroom mandate, focusing students on learning instead of digital distractions.
As part of HB 1105, the legislation extends Florida’s existing phone-free during instructional time policy to the full school day for all K-8 students with exceptions for students with an Individualized Education Plan, 504 Plan or documented medical need requiring the use of a device during the school day. The legislation also creates a pilot program for select high schools with reportable data to inform further updates to the law.
The Senate again proposed measures to roll back Florida’s accountability and choice landscape. Thanks to proactive work alongside House leadership and Gov. DeSantis, none of these proposals advanced to a hearing in the House after passing the Senate—representing a significant defense of transparency and student empowerment throughout the session.
Efforts to impose new restrictions on the Family Empowerment Scholarship, Florida’s flagship school choice program, were fully abandoned. Through vigilant advocacy, proposed statutory and budget constraints were stripped, preserving flexibility and sustained access for scholarship families.
Although several initiatives passed the House—such as enhanced math standards, chronic absenteeism interventions and literacy support in grades 4‑12—the Senate did not advance them. These remain top priorities heading into the 2026 session.
Despite a challenging legislative environment this session, Florida remains a national exemplar of bold, student-centered reform. By protecting core initiatives, unlocking new opportunities and investing strategically in education, ExcelinEd in Action and the Foundation for Florida’s Future have positioned Florida to continue its trajectory of excellence.
