Charter school maintenance funding rises to $260M in House spending plan

House budget leaders want to increase facility funding for charter schools to more than $260 million, continuing a yearly trend of heavy investment in their infrastructure as enrollment grows statewide.

The House’s newly released $113.6 billion proposed spending plan for Fiscal Year 2026-27 includes $260.2 million for charter school maintenance, repair, renovation and remodeling from the Public Education Capital Outlay and Debt Service Trust Fund (PECO).

That’s an increase of about $11.6 million, or 4.7%, over the $248.6 million the Legislature approved for charter school facilities in the current 2025-26 budget.

Charter schools are publicly funded but independently operated and cannot levy local property taxes. That structure makes state funding a primary source of capital support for charter buildings and major renovations, unlike traditional public school districts, which typically rely on a mix of state and local sources — including recurring allocations, local capital millage and bond financing — to address maintenance and facility needs.

As was the case last year, the new House proposal positions charter schools as the largest recipients of a dedicated maintenance line in the education capital budget. They would receive more than five times as much maintenance funding as Florida state colleges and universities, which would each receive $50 million for comparable repair and renovation needs.

Those $50 million set-asides, which provide a clearer and more structured maintenance funding framework for higher education, weren’t in this year’s budget.

Traditional public school districts are not funded through the charter-specific maintenance line item, but districts do benefit from other capital appropriations and ongoing local funding sources. In the 2025-26 adopted budget, lawmakers included $128 million in capital outlay grants for school districts and community colleges, along with $11.5 million for a list of specific public school facility projects, such as infrastructure repairs, safety improvements and campus expansions.

The House’s proposed budget for the coming year would maintain the same $128 million shared capital outlay grant pool for school districts and Florida College System institutions and $11.3 million for public school facility projects — a slight decrease from the prior year — not including district-specific appropriations individual lawmakers requested.

Florida has about 740 charter schools, with enrollment topping 408,481 students, representing about 14% of the state’s K-12 population, according to the Department of Education.

By comparison, there are more than 3,700 non-charter public schools.

The House proposal would provide roughly $352,000 per charter school for facility maintenance.