[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]By REID TUCKER[/FONT]
[FONT="] Superintendent of Schools Carlene Anderson broke down the School Board’s proposed 2011-2012 budget in a presentation to the Walton County Tea Party Patriots. [/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson filled in for former DeFuniak Springs City Manager Kim Kirby, who was originally scheduled to speak at the meeting, held Thursday, June 23, at the Life Enrichment Senior Center. Anderson explained various aspects of the tentative budget, but she emphasized the difficulties associated with maintaining high educational standards while cutting a projected $17.7 million.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The Walton County School District, which begins the school year on Aug.1, must adhere to a state-imposed budget timetable, meaning it will have to operate for a more than month using the tentative budget. As the school board will not know the final tax roll until June 30, Anderson called the expected decline from this year’s $112,400,000 to $94,700,000 a “solid but semi-speculative” figure. Public hearings to approve the millage rate and budget will be held on Aug. 2 but the final hearing will not be held until Sept. 6 or Sept. 13.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Though the district has for the past five years been certified as a high-performing school district by the Florida Department of Education, it was one of only five school districts statewide to earn the distinction last year. Clean audits and meeting state-mandated class-size reduction standards are just as important as student performance in determining whether or not a school district qualifies as high-performing, and that’s a balancing act Anderson said gets tougher as budgets get tighter.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “We have to do exactly what we did last year and more with a 15.7 percent decline in our budget,” She said. “That’s the big challenge.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson responded to questions from tea partiers in attendance at the meeting regarding her position on the class-size reduction amendment, which often requires the hiring of more teachers, especially through middle school grade levels where class sizes tend to be largest. Anderson said 80 percent or more of the district’s $64.2 million estimated general operating budget (itself down by $1,700,000 from the current budget) goes toward paying the salaries of the district's roughly 1,200 employees (about half of which are teachers earning, on average $55,000 per year). This figure makes her critical of the limitations on class size, which allow only 18 children per teacher in through third grade, 22 per teacher from fourth to eighth grade and no more than 25 per teacher in high school.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “I didn’t vote for it because I know it’s not the number of children in the room with the teacher, it’s the quality of the teacher that’s standing in front of those children that makes the difference,” Anderson said. “The most important thing a principal has to do is hire good teachers. Without them you don’t have a good education no matter how many kids are in those rooms.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] When asked what the district has done to curb costs during her tenure as superintendent, Anderson said positions had to be eliminated, including a substantial number of main district office staff over the past three years. Anderson said the preferred means of doing this is simply not to fill positions vacated when employees retire, but it isn’t always possible. Furthermore, the proposed capital funds budget will also take a hit, falling 42 percent from $27,600,000 to $15,900,000 in spite of a growing population, especially in the county’s coastal region.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The budget cuts are due in large part to declining tax revenues, which shrunk 67.3 percent from $21,530,249 in 2007-2008 to $11,951,879 last year, while revenues for 2011-2012 are expected to come in at $11,498,268. Although Walton County is “property rich,” with higher property values than much of the rest of the state, the state awards school districts a uniform $3,600 per student. Anderson said this means some of the county’s revenues go toward supporting other, “property poor” districts in efforts to equalize public education statewide.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said consolidation of schools is also an ineffective means of cutting the budget (although newly completed Emerald Coast Middle School will also house fifth graders come fall), as the district’s 7,400 students are spread across four distinct regions, each with schools with relatively small populations.[/FONT]
[FONT="] One tea party member asked Anderson about the school board’s decision to hold a special election in May, at the cost of about $40,000, for its proposed referendum to reinstate a 0.5-mill tax stead of including it as an item in the general election. The theory was that, if the referendum had been tacked on to the general election ballot, voters may have struck it down for first time in 12 years because of the nation’s ongoing economic crisis, Anderson said. The half-mill increase will bring in nearly $5.5 million over the next four years, which ultimately means the school district, the biggest employer in Walton County, did not have to consider eliminating teaching positions.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “Had we not had [the special election] we would have lost a significant amount of money and I would have been looking to lay off about 100 teachers,” Anderson said. “If I had to lay off 100 teachers we wouldn’t make class-size reduction and we wouldn’t have any chance of being a high-performing school district.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said the referendum, which passed by more than an 80-percent margin, shifts funds designated to the capital budget to the operations budget without costing taxpayers any more money. The money collected was used to shore up the district’s operations budget, which helps cover school supplies as well as art and music programs. She said the proposed total millage for 2011-2012 is 0.156 mills less than last year’s 5.070, but the state-mandated millage dropped from 2.749 to 2.593 while the school district’s discretionary millage remained the same at 0.748.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The final question addressed by Anderson at the meeting regarded the applying new technologies to the classroom, including the use of Apple’s new iPad or Amazon’s Kindle for use as so-called “digital textbooks.” Anderson explained that traditional textbooks can cost up to $50 a copy and need frequent replacing, whereas digital textbooks can be easily updated, deleted and re-downloaded as needed. She dispelled some of the crowd’s doubts about the needs of such technologies by saying that students will be required to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test online within two years time and also that a new requirement will make every student take at least one online course before graduation.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said it is her intention to integrate these technologies and others as soon as the district is in a financial position to do so for the simple reason that, in today’s world, technology skills are critical for students to succeed in a classroom setting and beyond.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “If we graduate children without technology skills we are setting them up for failure,” Anderson said. “Our job is to help them get a livelihood once they leave the education system.[/FONT][FONT="]“If we don’t start teaching children the way they learn we are missing the boat.”[/FONT]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]By REID TUCKER[/FONT]
[FONT="] Superintendent of Schools Carlene Anderson broke down the School Board’s proposed 2011-2012 budget in a presentation to the Walton County Tea Party Patriots. [/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson filled in for former DeFuniak Springs City Manager Kim Kirby, who was originally scheduled to speak at the meeting, held Thursday, June 23, at the Life Enrichment Senior Center. Anderson explained various aspects of the tentative budget, but she emphasized the difficulties associated with maintaining high educational standards while cutting a projected $17.7 million.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The Walton County School District, which begins the school year on Aug.1, must adhere to a state-imposed budget timetable, meaning it will have to operate for a more than month using the tentative budget. As the school board will not know the final tax roll until June 30, Anderson called the expected decline from this year’s $112,400,000 to $94,700,000 a “solid but semi-speculative” figure. Public hearings to approve the millage rate and budget will be held on Aug. 2 but the final hearing will not be held until Sept. 6 or Sept. 13.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Though the district has for the past five years been certified as a high-performing school district by the Florida Department of Education, it was one of only five school districts statewide to earn the distinction last year. Clean audits and meeting state-mandated class-size reduction standards are just as important as student performance in determining whether or not a school district qualifies as high-performing, and that’s a balancing act Anderson said gets tougher as budgets get tighter.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “We have to do exactly what we did last year and more with a 15.7 percent decline in our budget,” She said. “That’s the big challenge.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson responded to questions from tea partiers in attendance at the meeting regarding her position on the class-size reduction amendment, which often requires the hiring of more teachers, especially through middle school grade levels where class sizes tend to be largest. Anderson said 80 percent or more of the district’s $64.2 million estimated general operating budget (itself down by $1,700,000 from the current budget) goes toward paying the salaries of the district's roughly 1,200 employees (about half of which are teachers earning, on average $55,000 per year). This figure makes her critical of the limitations on class size, which allow only 18 children per teacher in through third grade, 22 per teacher from fourth to eighth grade and no more than 25 per teacher in high school.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “I didn’t vote for it because I know it’s not the number of children in the room with the teacher, it’s the quality of the teacher that’s standing in front of those children that makes the difference,” Anderson said. “The most important thing a principal has to do is hire good teachers. Without them you don’t have a good education no matter how many kids are in those rooms.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] When asked what the district has done to curb costs during her tenure as superintendent, Anderson said positions had to be eliminated, including a substantial number of main district office staff over the past three years. Anderson said the preferred means of doing this is simply not to fill positions vacated when employees retire, but it isn’t always possible. Furthermore, the proposed capital funds budget will also take a hit, falling 42 percent from $27,600,000 to $15,900,000 in spite of a growing population, especially in the county’s coastal region.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The budget cuts are due in large part to declining tax revenues, which shrunk 67.3 percent from $21,530,249 in 2007-2008 to $11,951,879 last year, while revenues for 2011-2012 are expected to come in at $11,498,268. Although Walton County is “property rich,” with higher property values than much of the rest of the state, the state awards school districts a uniform $3,600 per student. Anderson said this means some of the county’s revenues go toward supporting other, “property poor” districts in efforts to equalize public education statewide.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said consolidation of schools is also an ineffective means of cutting the budget (although newly completed Emerald Coast Middle School will also house fifth graders come fall), as the district’s 7,400 students are spread across four distinct regions, each with schools with relatively small populations.[/FONT]
[FONT="] One tea party member asked Anderson about the school board’s decision to hold a special election in May, at the cost of about $40,000, for its proposed referendum to reinstate a 0.5-mill tax stead of including it as an item in the general election. The theory was that, if the referendum had been tacked on to the general election ballot, voters may have struck it down for first time in 12 years because of the nation’s ongoing economic crisis, Anderson said. The half-mill increase will bring in nearly $5.5 million over the next four years, which ultimately means the school district, the biggest employer in Walton County, did not have to consider eliminating teaching positions.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “Had we not had [the special election] we would have lost a significant amount of money and I would have been looking to lay off about 100 teachers,” Anderson said. “If I had to lay off 100 teachers we wouldn’t make class-size reduction and we wouldn’t have any chance of being a high-performing school district.”[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said the referendum, which passed by more than an 80-percent margin, shifts funds designated to the capital budget to the operations budget without costing taxpayers any more money. The money collected was used to shore up the district’s operations budget, which helps cover school supplies as well as art and music programs. She said the proposed total millage for 2011-2012 is 0.156 mills less than last year’s 5.070, but the state-mandated millage dropped from 2.749 to 2.593 while the school district’s discretionary millage remained the same at 0.748.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The final question addressed by Anderson at the meeting regarded the applying new technologies to the classroom, including the use of Apple’s new iPad or Amazon’s Kindle for use as so-called “digital textbooks.” Anderson explained that traditional textbooks can cost up to $50 a copy and need frequent replacing, whereas digital textbooks can be easily updated, deleted and re-downloaded as needed. She dispelled some of the crowd’s doubts about the needs of such technologies by saying that students will be required to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test online within two years time and also that a new requirement will make every student take at least one online course before graduation.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Anderson said it is her intention to integrate these technologies and others as soon as the district is in a financial position to do so for the simple reason that, in today’s world, technology skills are critical for students to succeed in a classroom setting and beyond.[/FONT]
[FONT="] “If we graduate children without technology skills we are setting them up for failure,” Anderson said. “Our job is to help them get a livelihood once they leave the education system.[/FONT][FONT="]“If we don’t start teaching children the way they learn we are missing the boat.”[/FONT]
