Public school districts across the state are facing severe funding losses and now must make difficult decisions on what positions, programs — and in some cases schools — get to stay and which need to go in order to stay afloat with shrinking funds from Tallahassee.
Making cuts can be emotional. Such was evident in Highlands County recently.
Highlands County is trying to trim millions from its budget in order to keep the operation of its finances from be taken over by the state as. That has already happened in neighboring Glades County and in Union County to the north. This takeover happens when a school district's reserves are less than 3 percent of its budget.
Without millions of dollars in cuts, Highlands is looking at a reserve balance of 1.3 %.
The funding shortfalls are a result of public schools getting fewer tax dollars from the state due to declining student enrollment. This decline can be attributed to the state greatly expanding the school voucher program which has diverted public tax dollars to private schools. Skyrocketing health-care costs over the past few years has eaten away at the fund balance, officials say.
That’s why for weeks Highlands County Schools Superintendent Brenda Longshore has presented the board with plans to cut about $4.5 million from the budget. That's about 19 positions. Doing so would bring the reserve balance to 3.7 percent.
School board member Donna Homerton doesn't think that it is good enough.
"I feel that what we've done so far, folks, is putting bandages on it," she said. "We've got to take some bigger measures. It's not going to be things that anyone wants to have done, but we've got to do what's going to be in the best for our students and keeping public education going."
Homerton, at a recent workshop on school cuts, proposed getting rid of the two assistant superintendent positions and merging the positions into one job. She also called for getting rid of a large majority of the curriculum content specialist. These are the people that specialize in subject areas such as math, science, reading and technology. She'd like to get rid of all specialists but one for reading and the other for technology.
Longshore implored her and the board to re-think those ideas.
“Boy, this is such a drastic move," Longshore said. She said these specialty positions have been key in Highland's recent successes.
"[They] are driving the instruction for over 11,000 students across schools across this district,” she said. "...You will destroy our student achievement in Highlands County. We are working so hard to bring the students back, they are not going to want to be in D and F schools, and it can happen this quick."
In the end the board did not make any cuts to positions but directed the superintendent to come back with proposed cuts and be prepared to cut administrative salaries.
The next special meeting will be May 26.
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