I attended but my head hurts from 2 hours of numbers and talking about the potential cuts. I have 5 pages of notes. I will try and post more details later, and I sure it will be in the paper.
In a nutshell- we need to find $8 million. It is ugly. And before people start screaming about where the money is going or that it is not being spent wisely, they need to remember that revenues are waaaay down, and probably aren't going to come up anytime soon, and we are working with a lot less money than in the past. Our system already seems pretty bare bones to me- we don't have a lot of the bells and whistles we were accustomed to in a larger metro school system, so I am going nuts at the thought of cutting back even more.
The budget workshop will continue on Mar. 10th, at Walton High School (we were packed into the Board of Ed room tonight), and Mar. 24th will be the "decision day" for the budget since there is a deadline of March 31st (for a reason that I can't recall).
I attended this workshop because I am interested in the "education delivery model" switch for high school- going back to a traditional 7 period schedule from the 4 by 4 block schedule that currently is not working well. Other schools have been switching back in droves, and we need to as well. All principals but one seem to be in favor of going back to the traditional schedule and are very anxious to start working on the next year's schedules, since it will take some real work to rearrange. There was no huge opposition to switching back, so principals were instructed to go ahead and work on schedules, and the official vote will be Mar. 24th.
Ready for some revolting figures for our state? (from Carlene Anderson's presentation)~
Florida is
47th in expenditures per
person in K-12 education
47th in expenditures per
student in k-12 education
50th in
personal income spent on public schools
Shameful.
She asked that
we let our legislators know :
that we support public school funding,
that we are appalled at Florida's funding of public education,
and we don't want to be 50th anymore, and let others know what the education funding picture looks like in Florida and Walton County.
I am cooked now- goodnight!