Charter School Law

The charter school sector is growing in the State of Florida.  In 2015, there are over a quarter million students being educated in charter schools in the State of Florida, and the number of charter schools is rapidly approaching 700. Charters are now open in most of the State of Florida’s 67 school districts.

Mr. Woodring has been working with charter school legal issues since 1999, and has worked with hundreds of charter schools, in dozens of Florida’s school districts. We can help with the legal needs for the entire life cycle of a charter school – from putting together the application, through getting the district approval, negotiating a contract, securing a facility and entering into contracts that are needed with vendors, selecting your teachers, filling out your charter school board, dealing with teacher and student issues, and making sure you are in compliance with open government and public records requirements. We can also help with contract amendments or disputes with school districts over the interpretation of contracts and any investigations or audits relating to compliance with local, state or federal requirements. If a district does a notice of intent to terminate or non-renew a charter school, we handle appeals of those matters to the division of administrative hearings (DOAH).

We are also starting to do more work with charter operators and charter management organizations from other states that have opportunities or occasions to open or work with charters in the State of Florida.

Please contact us if we may be of assistance to you on charter school matters – you can look at the other pages under the charter school menu for more information about specific legal matters for which we provide assistance to Florida Charter Schools. And, as always, we encourage you to contact us before you even know you have any legal problems with your charter school – it can be much less expensive to do preventive legal work than to fight fires once they are already fully engaged.