The Flagler County school district is caught in a feedback loop draining its budget as enrollment drops: more students are abandoning the district for private or homeschool education paid for with public money. That reduces the amount of state money the district can count on. More limited resources may encourage more students to leave, further reducing state dollars going to the district.
Presenting a grim report of what’s ahead, John Cerra of the Cerra Consulting Group, the school district’s legislative consultant, told the School Board on Tuesday that the continuing loss of students to “school choice” options “will be extremely challenging for the board to continue to make their budget moving forward.”
Statewide public school districts lost a collective 1 percent of students this year even as the statewide education budget rose by 1.69 percent, or $945 million. Per student, the increase equates to 1.59 percent, with Flagler getting a 2.36 percent increase.
But local districts won’t see most of that money. “Most of that increase was within the vouchers,” Cerra told the board at a workshop. “We will not be able to spend a lot of those dollars.” In a rare bright spot, the recently ended legislative sessions safeguarded full funding for acceleration programs such as the International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and the Cambridge AICE program.
But it left flat mental health and school safety funding, in effect causing a decline in those funds as districts lose purchasing power. Districts, including Flagler schools, are seeing deficits ahead and choices to make.
“It’s not like this is a shock to anyone that’s in this room of where we are,” School Board member Derek Barrs said. “We could be in a whole lot worse shape. But we’re not in a great shape. We’re still going to have to make some hard decisions coming up in the future here, and that’s the cold, hard facts. And I think that’s what everyone in this room and people are listening need to have that understanding.”
Barrs said that leaves the district with no choice but to convince the community that in the “school choice” world, “this really sets the stage for us to set ourselves apart of being the best choice.”
Flagler district officials estimate that about 2,000 local students are in the voucher system, though a large portion were never in public schools to begin with. But that portion of students leaving public schools for vouchers is growing. Flagler County schools’ population has not increased in 18 years even as the county’s population has increased by about 33 percent in that span. The district is expecting a net drop of 432 students–a 3 percent decline–when the new school year begins in August.
Still, Superintendent LaShakia Moore tried to put a brighter spin on the district’s future. “We are a choice, and we have 13,000 plus students whose families choose us, and we need to remain the best choice for those students and their families,” she said.
Even though Flagler schools are getting a net 2.36 percent increase in state funding, “there are a lot of factors that will not make that 2.36 a true increase,” Cerra said. The legislature is requiring Flagler schools to spend an additional $2.2 million on state mandates while providing only $1.9 million in additional funding. That creates a $300,000 deficit for a district ending the current fiscal year with having to close a $2.5 million deficit.
“Other local commitments for next year, including health insurance increases and planned raises would require another $3.5 million that Flagler Schools does not have in this state budget,” Cerra’s presentation cautioned.
“We are having our own issue,” Cerra said of Flagler schools. “Other districts are having a worse time dealing with vouchers and the new budget situation.”
One of those issues is the accountability of the voucher program. Districts are desperate for data to ensure that parents aren’t double-dipping–sending their students to public schools while cashing in on the roughly $8,000 per student per year available through the voucher program. Lawmakers were supposed to fix that this year. The state Department of Education is required to submit calculations ensuring that families aren’t double-dipping. “This was supposed to be a part of the bill. Unfortunately, it did not come through with the final negotiations,” Cerra said. In an interview earlier this year, Flagler Schools Superintendent LaShakia Moore said there is a $48 million difference between the money withheld from districts and the money awarded to families as vouchers. That figure, she said, is indicative of the double-dipping.
Other challenges: “There were no increases to safe schools and the mental health allocation, which was interesting, because it’s the first time in about eight years that there was no increases to those,” Cerra said.
The Safe Schools program pays for the Flagler school district’s half of the cost of Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies in each of the district’s nine schools (two at each of the high schools). The County Commission pays the other half. Those costs increase every year, so the school district will have to absorb the additional costs.
“We had an unfortunate incident at the Florida State University,” Cerra said, referring to Phoenix Ikner, the 20-year-old son of a cop, shooting and killing two people and injuring six on campus in mid-April. “You would have figured that these increases would have gone up because of the need,” Cerra said of mental health and safe-school funding.
Florida Retirement System costs are also going up, and staff raises are ahead, adding pressure to the budget.
The consultants said the legislative session that just ended dashed some hopes for initiatives that would have helped the district. “John and I were disappointed about the outcome with rural Renaissance,” Bob Cerra told the board, referring to a plan the Senate passed unanimously to improve health care, education, transportation and economic development in counties like Flagler. “There were some real opportunities there that would have helped the district in its budgeting and provided opportunities to move some of our core issues forward. I do believe that the senate president will be bringing that back next year.”
The budget lawmakers eventually passed did little for education. Tax cuts were limited to eliminating the tax businesses pay on rent. The legislature had already reduced that tax to 2 percent over the years, as opposed to the regular 6 percent tax.
The bill also creates a monthlong sales tax “holiday” for school supplies, every year for the length of August. The suspension exempts from both the state and local sales taxes (including the school district’s own half-penny sales tax) school supplies costing $50 or less and clothes costing $100 or less, as well as personal computers and accessories costing $1,500 or less.
Numerous items were added to the list of permanent exemptions from the sales tax, including batteries, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, portable generators, bicycle helmets, sunscreen and insect repellent. Lawmakers for inexplicable reasons also exempted gold, silver and platinum bullion sales from the sales tax.
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