Tampa Bay's school budget cuts

Florida's new state budget spends $18.4-billion in K-12 public education, a decrease of $332-million or 1.8-percent less than the current year. That's a per-pupil decline of $130.85 over the current  budget.

Here's what the numbers look like for Tampa Bay-area districts: Pinellas will take the hardest hit, with a $27.7-million reduction, or 3.6 percent, due in large part to the county's declining student enrollment. Hillsborough will take a $10.3-million reduction (0.8 per cent), while fast-growing Pasco gets an increase of $2.7-million (0.6 per cent). Hernando takes a $212,000 loss, or a decline of 0.1 percent).  Pasco is one of 10 districts out of 67 that gets more money next year, despite the bleak condition of state finances.

Comments

Pinellas is closer to $47 million cut if you include other cuts made during the special session(s)

The numbers above are the decrease in total revenues available to these districts, but they do not reflect the amount of the cuts that the districts will need to make.

Included in the reduced base are MAP funds, CSR operating funds and student growth (for Pasco) that cannot fund the existing base. They must fund new bonuses and new teaching units. Since the revenues provided are already short of the base, this means that these cuts will be on top of the numbers cited in the article.

We can spend 10 million on a health clinic and 2.5 million for a St. Pete college "govt institute" yet we are slashing funds for our schools. What good are these two institutes good for? We dont need a free health clinic...go to your doctor or the hospital. What the heck is a "government institute"? Its a waste of money!!!!!!!!

What a joke this state has become...we care more about our stinking roads and making the medians look pretty than we do about our schools and educating our children!

If I could sell my house for a decent price I'd sell it and get the hell out of this whacked out state!!!

Steve, does that reduction per student number take into account new members?

[Donald Lance]

Hold on a second! This post said there is a decrease of $322 mil in school budget, yet the article above this says there is a $365 mil increase in property taxes to fund schools. The math doesn't work! Do you want to chime in on this Termie?

[Ron]

They have been throwing money at the school system for years, with little success. Each year has ended in disappointment and the same old rhetoric from the educators...."give us more money, and your school system will be great." Well, it never has been great, and it's time to start giving them less. They need to get rid of the sub-standard teachers that are in our schools and change the way that new applicants are hired and trained.
In my many years of running a large business I learned long ago that more money does not make a poor employee any better. If they don't have the right attitude and aptitude when hired, money will not make it magically appear.

What is the graduation rate -- less than 60 per cent? -- of Pinellas County high schools? More and more money has not yet solved that problem.

[Dee]

Complain all you want about schools closing, you are probably one of the people who voted yes to amendment one which you and your children will pay the price.

Ron - so what exactly did you do to attract better applicants? Offer more money than your competitors? (hint hint)

[Mike Daley]

What has happened to the 18 BILLION dollars coming from the lotto since 1988?

[Greg]

Well Governor Crist, thank you again (tongue in cheek) for your strong leadership in the area of education. Dr. Wilcox warned this would happen. One of the two times I agreed with his decision. The other was when he resigned.

[Jack]

FloriDUH! Florida is no longer a state. It's a banana republic! Do y'all realize how much of a laughingstock you've become?

Mike Daely

It went to pay for the thousands of kids who went to Florida colleges on subpar academic credentials.

[Ed]

Hey Ron, Sounds like you've learned the secret! Why don't you start teaching so that our students will be better trained than what our teachers are preparing them to be! Teachers give much of themselves at the expense of their families to educate our kids, and quite a few of them don't want to be educated!

[booger]

THATS WHY I'M BUYNG A FLORIDA HOME WITH A 100% mortgage....so when i'm done working here in 5 yrs...i can get foreclosed on and get the heck OUT.
viva la france!

[Parent]

The drop out rate for college students is much greater than for high school, the average states approximately 30% who start college recieve a degree,but yet the state has chosen to give a 6% increase of our tax dollars to colleges and state universities, and take away millions from the public school system. These young people who are being educated are the future of this country. Just another ploy of politicians to remove the middle class from Florida.
The tax burden has always fallen on the middle class, and soon our children will be the working poor.The dollars need to be spent in K-12 education. Determine why students drop out, maybe they are just so bored taking college prep classes? Who will re-pair our cars, air conditioners, cook our food, etc. These would be application classes they might be able to enjoy and understand.
College is not ment for every one. Even the degreed college students who are now looking for a job probaly would agree.

Remember LOTTO was the first answer, they stopped funding education and solely depended on the LOTTO. Then the yahoo's voted in Amendment 1, strictly because Charlie Crist thought it would be good for education, have you seen the light yet? I hope so!

[BA]

Stop crying. You only work about 7 months a year if you total up 'work' days. Work a full year and then whine.

[JD]

They also had been terminating all probationary employees with flimsy justifications prior to this news getting out ......they were having employees "resign, " telling them being fired would "look bad," because the board didn't want to pay out any unemployment for forced layoffs!

[k]

Eliminate jobs in the admin. bldg. not in the classrooms.

Now we are taking a step in the right direction!!!

3:44 has got this thing pegged.

7:11
DITTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This article is wrong. Pasco did not get an increase. We got an overall decrease in funds. The March 07-08 budget had already been cut by millons of dollars. While we may be getting slightly more than what the March figures due to growth, we are getting several million less than was allocated for last year.

Crists sister used to teach middle school. Now she is employed with a large salary at SPC.
The schools get axed - SPC gets 2.5 to fund this bogus government academy. Once more we see Karl Kuttler on the public dole from his politically connected friends.

The entire Crist family should be embarrassed by this. Sad.

[Linda]

Middle school teachers may be asked to teach an additional one or two periods a day AND take a 2% pay cut! How many "highly qualified" teachers do you think will stay in education? How many young teachers will stay when they can't make ends meet now with rising fuel and food costs? What will happen to our educational system that spends millions on FCAT NRT, FCAT SSS, Kaplan Classroom Assessment Tests, CELLA (esol) testing, SRI testing and yet won't pay their teachers a salary that provides for basic life necessities? How sad! Thanks, Charlie---NOT!

"Stop crying. You only work about 7 months a year if you total up 'work' days. Work a full year and then whine."

As the husband of a teacher, I can say with certainty that teachers work in the classroom 10 or 11 months a year. If you count the unpaid nighttime and weekend hours preparing lessons and grading papers, teachers work 12 months a year.

[Bill]

In the last 40 years I have heard the teachers complain about needing smaller classroom sizes, better equipment, and more money. To get smaller classes, they had to hire more teachers. To find more teachers the school district had to lower their hiring standards. Now, many years later the graduation rate keeps getting worse and the teachers are still wanting more money. Perhaps they should look back at what was successful in the past. The school district needs to hire fewer, but better qualified, teachers that can handle a larger class size. The money saved by getting rid of the poor teachers can go for higher salaries for the best teachers. Get rid of the teachers that are holding the kids back.

[terminator]

Donald:
yes, it's true. the legislature has done this every year over the past eight years. it was Jeb's "dirty little secret".
at one time, the state spent about 65% of the overall budget on public education (K-20). Now it's down to 50%.
fortunately, for Jeb and the legislature, rapidly increasing property valuations between 1998-2006 masked the steep incline in property taxes until people started feeling beseiged after two consecutive years of pummeling by the hurricanes of 04' and 05'. that's when the whole property tax and property insurance crisis got started.
ever since the real estate bubble started bursting around late 2006 and valuations have headed downward, people finally started waking up and noticing.
with the economy being what it is, it's doubtful the state will pick up the slack and start increasing it's share.
guess the message is, if you want decent schools in your county, you'll have to pay for them locally!

Ron and Bill:
you guys are terribly misguided or on drugs. the state has 67 districts and comprises millions of mostly low performing minority students (poor black, poor hispanic, migrants, low income whites). many of these students lack the parental support, motivation and desire to learn, are poorly prepared for school before they even enter in pre-K and spend most of their lives sliding through from one year to the next.
this country has pissed BILLIONS down the drain attempting to "close the achievement gap" and is no closer to doing so now than when they started over a decade ago.
Florida always has been and always will be a backwater state dependent upon tourism and agriculture. you don't see any fortune 500 or high tech companies beating down our door to relocate here do you? (except those who were given billion dollar tax rebates by their buddy the Jebster).
why do you think that's so? because we have poor teachers? no.....because we have a f*cked up education system whose clientele is comprised primarily of poor minorities who for the most part don't give a rat's *ss about education!
when you throw in mismanagement by the district administrations and lack of funding from Tallahassee, you have a recipe for disaster.

Thanks for putting forth the winning plan Bill.

Too bad the teachers union lackies will not act on it. They view their mission as being one to serve the democratic party not educate the children so what is most important to them is "numbers", quantity not quality.

[PH Mom]

Slice away at that budget! The new maps screwed my PH neighborhood and now I'll have to pay for private high school. It's no wonder why enrollment is down. Draw a map that really is local and you'll fix that.

[Raye]

For all of you who think we have cushy jobs and make too much money--how about raising your kids so they are aceptable to come out into the public? They act like you---absolutely no manners and nasty and they think they own the universe.

[FAB]

Terminator:

It seems to me you are saying it's the minorities fault that Florida has such a low quality educational system. I am a hispanic with a Bachelor Degree and studying for my Master's. The most important thing to my family is education. I don't know what hispanics you live around and don't care, but all the hispanics I know their main priority is their children's education. Please do some research before you make such broad statements.
On another note: What is going on in Florida's educational system is mainly because of the government. Crist talked about education and how he was going to do so much and I am ashamed to say I believed him, and now this is what is happening. As a mother of a soon to be middle school student, I am appalled of what they are doing to education and the hard working teachers, and ultimately the ones that will suffer are our children. They should be our focus.

[terminator]

10:31
no harm intended miss.

if you look at education statistics, you will see that blacks are on the bottom, followed by Hispanics, then whites with Asians having the highest test scores.

certainly you can make generalizations about the cold hard data. yes some black kids are good students, yes some hispanic kids are good students, sure you can find bad white and maybe a handful of asian students but in the overall the data speaks for itself.

also, I happen to live and work in one of the most heavily populated areas of the state (South Florida).

every D and F school in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade county is disproportionately black or hispanic.
South Florida is heavily populated with black, hispanic and poor minorities (Mexican/Central American migrant workers, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, South Americans, etc. etc.)
I know the same holds true for Hillsborough, Pinellas, Orange, Duval and every other major school district is the state.
You would be hard pressed to find a white majority D or F school anywhere in the state (I invite you to try).
So, yes that's the reason Florida has such a dismal education reputation.

It's great you're getting your education and that it's important to your family. Don't take it personally but you can't argue with the proof.

[FAB]

Since I love a challenge, and have access to this information. I will name a few schools for you that are white majority; which are D or F schools from 2007 data. So, here you go: Marion - North Marion HS, Manatee - Bayshore HS, Levy - Williston HS, Pinellas - Dixie Hollins, NorthEast HS, Polk - Lakeland HS, Ridge Community HS, Kathleen Senior HS, St. Lucie - St. Lucie West Centennial, Treasure Coast, Weatherbee Elementary, Sarasota - Booker HS, Volusia - Mainland HS, Atlantic HS, Pine Ridge HS, Alachua - Hawthorne Middle/HS, Micanopy Middle, Millville Elementary...It would take me quite a bit of time to put them all on the blog. Surprisingly enough I wasn't so pressed...I can see why you feel the way you do because you live in the highest minority populated area. I will say I live in Pinellas County, and my area is predominantly black, and schools are either "A" or "B" schools. My child has been in an "A" school and will be going to an "A" middle school, and guess what white is not the majority. I have an 18 yr. old who went to "A" schools as well, and is now a double major at USF...Let me say this one last thing, and end this discussion. I never respond to comments on blogs, but I found your statements a little disturbing and misguided and felt I needed to respond. Thanks for taking the time to read my comments. I wish you much peace and luck. Please lets continue focusing on the main issue, which is quality education for the children of Florida.

[Tom]

Until Pinellas County Schools takes a good hard look at their costs to fund teacher health care and retirement plans, it will have budgeting problems. These two costs hurt the american auto industry and it will hurt our school system. With our decreasing home values causing a decrease in school funding (taxes) and our legislature decreasing school funding and pressure from the citizens to reduce school budgets, it is time to face the facts....one of which is...it is much to costly to give teachers a fully funded pension and healthcare at costs cheaper than what other employees are paying in our area.
Also when a teacher is married and a spouse can get health insurance from his/her employer, we should look at charging more to the teacher who chooses to keep the spouse on the teachers health plan.
And before I hear teachers are underpaid, "How much money should a teacher get paid annually, so I/we do not have to hear a tracher is not under paid"?.

[JD]

Tom:

Where do you get the idea that teachers pay less on a family plan than other industries pay?

I taught in both Pinellas and Pasco and carried health insurance for my family. I finally switched and had my husband carry the insurance because it was ridiculous what the counties were charging. I got much better benefits for myself and the family under medical, dental, and vision under his plan.

Where are you getting this misinformation regarding health care benefits and costs?

And FYI, the Florida state retirement plan for teachers is not "fully funded," or comparable to other plans, for example those for firefigters, police, and other governmental employees...

I think if teachers were paid an hourly rate for the work they do, you would see just how underpaid they are!

[JD]

Forgot to add that my husband's plan cost about half what I was paying out.