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A majority of districts do not share spe- cial referendum money with their charter schools, Goodwin said, noting that such action so far has not been mandated by the Florida Legislature. Zucker was in agreement with Goodwin that the money is an incentive for new charter schools to open in Sarasota County. What especially concerns her, Zucker said, is that some of the proposed new schools will draw students from other counties, instead of just serving Sarasota County residents, and that a number of applications in recent years have come from corporations, meaning district funds leave the area. Many of the applicants in 2013 "didn't have any personnel at all associated with Sarasota County," Goodwin noted. Superintendent Lori White told the board members that two of the organizations that have submitted letters of intent regarding new charter applications propose South County schools — Sky Academy in Englewood for students in grades six through eight and the North Port Collegiate Military Academy for students in sixth through 12th grades. A third letter proposes a school in Lakewood Ranch for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The representative of the latter group is Justin Matthews, former principal of the Imagine School in North Port. One of the potential applicants this year is a virtual school, White said. Goodwin pointed out that virtual schools "don't need capital dollars, do they?" "So I somehow think that at some point we have to say, 'Enough is enough,'" Zucker added. Goodwin proposed that the board make a decision on a case-by-case basis. When Kovach sought clarification that dis- trict personnel already caution applicants that they might not receive the money, White responded that that is correct. "We've always told them that [so the money] is not part of the application budget." Even though district staff has been convey- ing that to applicants, Goodwin pointed out, some charter school groups last year added in the money anyway when preparing their budgets for School Board review. White noted that the only prior consensus the School Board members had reached in the past on the topic was to deny the funding to charter schools whose applications they refused approval, only to have the school rep- resentatives appeal the decision at the state level and win. "My concern is that we make it very clear what the parameters are [for the future]," Kovach said. "It makes it really murky, as a board, to just say, 'Well, we don't like you, so we're not going to give [the money] to you.'" Additionally, he pointed out, over the past several years, the School Board members have refused to approve the "vast majority" of charter school applications because they felt the proposals failed to meet state and district educational standards. If the schools are good enough to be in the district, he con- tinued, "Why would we not want them to be successful?" "We do want them to be successful," Goodwin responded, "but maybe they don't need our money to be successful." % Sarasota News Leader June 20, 2014 Page 38