School Board Warned Cuts Will be Deep

The Manatee County School Board looked into a financial abyss Monday night. Assistant Superintendent Jim Drake said the district has an additional thousand students this year, but property values are expected to drop again by one percent.

After last year’s budget battles, the school board embarked on a new earlier procedure to develop next year’s spending plan. At the second of several open workshops, members began to think cuts would never stop.

Superintendent Tim McGonegal reminded them, “We’ve cut $60 million in the last four years.” And their legislative consultant warned them the state isn’t likely to come to the rescue this spring.

 “There’s a $2 billion shortfall in the state budget right now,” said Jim Hamilton of Mixon and Associates. “You are significantly behind where you were nine years ago.”

Hamilton then asked an ominous question. “If you can forever absorb cuts, why shouldn’t you? That’s what policy makers will ask,” he said. “The job is impossible, and getting more impossible.”

School Board Member Barbara Harvey asked Hamilton, “All counties have been cut to the bone. We don’t have another source of funding. Where do we go from here?”

“I’d love to give you an answer,” he said. “I live in Escambia County and we’re closing schools. We just closed a high school. We’ve consolidated three schools into one. That’s the kind of thing you’re beginning to see.”

Board Member Robert Gause noted Sarasota County Schools have embarked on a management audit by an outside consulting firm to look for additional efficiencies. “The Gulf Coast Builders Exchange is suggesting Manatee County could benefit too,” he said.

The idea met a lukewarm response. McGonegal said he would speak with the company at this week’s meeting of the Florida School Board Association.

Of the state’s $69 billion budget, general revenues make up less than a third but must pay for the educational system. Hamilton said education gets 54 percent of general revenues, but 19 percent goes to the college system. “We get 35 percent for K-through-12,” he said.

With revenues under assault from the Florida Retirement System and health care for state workers, the state is now looking at a $2 billion shortfall. Legislators begin their 2012 session on January 10, but will be consumed by redistricting. Hamilton said he doesn’t expect a state budget until early May.

Local school boards can’t begin to grapple with their individual budgets until they know the state’s contribution. But with state-imposed caps on their taxing authority, local school boards have little flexibility to make up for any reduction in state funding, Drake told Patch after the meeting.