The number of Flagler County school students enrolled in private schools at public expense surged 20 percent from last year, to 1,926 students, compared to 1,600 last year, while enrollment in Flagler County’s traditional public schools again stagnated or declined. For the first time in recent memory, kindergarten enrollment is also declining.
The state financial funding for schools based on the year’s third calculation (which takes October enrollment as a baseline) will cost the district a loss of about $400,000, Patty Wormeck, the district’s finance chief, told the school board this afternoon. There are two more calculations to come this year, but the third calculation drives funding for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends June 30.
The district lost a net 100 students between the year’s second calculations last fall and its third calculation in January.
State funding for Flagler County students cashing in on taxpayer funded vouchers for private school or homeschooling rose this year to $19.2 million, from $14.2 million last year.
Flagler’s public schools have not seen an enrollment increase in two decades. In February, enrollment was below 12,500 for the county’s nine schools, about 300 students fewer than in the 2007-08 school year, even though the county’s population has surged 50 percent in that span. Superintendent LaShakia Moore said only four districts in the state are seeing enrollment increase.
New residents have been disproportionately older residents. But the net loss of students in the district means that while some families with children continue to move to the county, private, online or homeschooling is reaping the enrollment benefits, with the state offering roughly $8,000 per student per year in voucher money–significantly more if the student has special needs.
The implications are vast–from the district reevaluating its school construction program, which is all but on hold for now–to builders and developers questioning whether school development impact fees (levied on new construction to defray the cost of new school construction) are calibrated to the current reality.
In the 2020-21 school year, when eligibility was restricted, just 136 students cashed in on what the state calls “opportunity scholarships,” and what Colleen Conklin, the former long-time Flagler County School Board member, has called a “grift” and “one of the biggest scams ever pulled on American taxpayers.” Starting in the 2021-22 school year, all students regardless of income have been eligible for tax subsidies.
That does not mean that the 1,926 Flagler County students receiving school tax subsidies were all in district schools then moved off to private or homeschooling. Many were already in those settings. But it does mean that more private schools have popped up to siphon off students who would have previously attended traditional public schools, and more parents are choosing the private option.
The voucher system has created confusion about school budgets, because the state still embeds public money earmarked for private-school vouchers in the district’s overall budget. So while the Flagler school district’s bottom line shows total state and local funding of $139.5 million for the third financial calculation of the year, and what appears to be a $1.35 million increase over the second calculation, the increase is deceptive–and is, in fact, a loss, when voucher money is taken out.
“Even though it shows $1.3 million of an increase, it is important to know that the vast majority of that, if not more than that, was due to the increase in scholarship funding,” Wormeck said. “That is not what came directly back to the district’s base funding. In total, the district lost about $400,000 in the third calc.”
Ruddy noted that even those figures don’t “really reflect the true cost,” with the legislature again this year failing to legislate a fix for hundreds of millions of dollars that are unaccounted for, as thousands of students cash in on vouchers but still attend public schools, and thousands of families cash in with little accountability: the state does not disclose where students receiving public money attend school or how much individual private schools are cashing in from the state.
“We very often are educating students who come back to us, who otherwise took that money or it was paid to another institution,” Ruddy said. “And of course, we will provide their education. But if they’re not there during those FTE counts, we’re not getting that funding.” FTE counts refer to full-time-equivalent student counts conducted periodically in the district to drive state funding to the district proper.
Inexplicably–and frustratingly for local school officials–the state has also made it difficult on local districts to claim the money they are owed by double-dipping parents who took voucher money only to then switch back to public schools. The burden is on the local districts, not on the state–or the parents–to ensure accountability.
“We do have students that may be sitting with us that their family has received a scholarship,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said during today’s board workshop. “There is a very extensive process that we have to go through in order to get those funds released to us here at the district office, as well as just making sure that we don’t have those duplications present. And so though I think that I would agree there’s still work to be done on that. We appreciate that it is getting better than where it was, but it still continues to be an issue.”
Last year, the district recorded just $96,000 in such double-dipping money–a pittance, compared to existing abuses.
But even local figures mask the true losses to the voucher program: Wormeck’s presentation, as in previous years (when former board members urged better transparency in breaking out voucher dollars from district dollars), still conflated both pots. “It is something that I will note in the future possibly to show a picture of what is the district’s loss versus the scholarships’ gain, like you had just asked,” Wormeck pledged to the board members. But she’d made that pledge to Conklin, too.
JimboXYZ says
$ 19 million/year is cheap, when the cost of building those 2 new schools was $ 405 million. And the beauty of it all ? It’s state money not Flagler County resident tax money for the vouchers. If we’re already being charged for it, common sense would be to not pay more for any of it again on top of what money is already out there to educate children. Another school or two/few is just an empire build. Other developer(s)/contractor(s) getting rich off saddling the rest of us with that growth BS that nobody wanted anyway. Biden & Alfin era was that with the growth, schools would be over capacity. Obviously, those projections were WRONG ! So instead o raising taxes to pay for unnecessary school capacity, the battle cry is raise taxes because the vouchers are hurting the School Boards budget for building empires that will undoubtedly cost more in labor costs to actually educate children that aren’t any smarter or more educate than human beings ever were for not opening the books & doing the learning process outside the classroom. There’s only so much a brain can absorb in a 50-60 minute class.
Remember, the goal here is to educate, not build empires & infrastructure that is a drag on financials of every family in Flagler County. What hurts most to read is that the Flagler County School Board actually thinks this is their money, that they are losing. How can the voucher schools take in less money & educate these children better than the bloated public school system ? Candidly, I think both are full of nonsense for their claims that either is better/worse for education of children K-12. Show me the proof that any of the educational K-12 has been worth any more than the investment of initial exposure ? Anyone that has ever accomplished has done that outside of a classroom for that hunger for knowledge, to take their accomplishment/mastery/expertise beyond what any teacher or instructor ever did for a set aside time of covering as much theory in a structured hour of a presentation of what the lesson from the textbook chapter(s) were. Anyone walking into that classroom should be prepared enough to have read that much ? Not being that prepared, that child is just cheating themselves for that hour. The syllabus is an outline. Prepare & learn outside on your own is the only way anyone ever learned. Absorbing it for zero exposure for the 1st & only time for any interest in any given subject has always been short of mastering that subject. Repetition, rinse & repeat, nobody ever was excellent at what they never practiced, unless someone gave them the answers. Be the Michael Jordan of learning anything.
https://flaglerlive.com/school-enrollment-december-2024/
Endless corruption says
Lowest paid teachers in the nation! Thank a rapeublican! Plenty of money to name monuments after pedophiles though!