School leaders criticize budget

Gainesville Sun - June 17, 2001
By KAREN VOYLES
Sun staff writer

Even though Florida legislators increased education spending by millions this year, superintendents from some rural districts in North Central Florida are convinced that education was not a top priority in Tallahassee this year. They reached their conclusion after reading and hearing from Education Commissioner Charlie Crist.

Among Crist's comments was his claim that if the United States can send people to the moon, they should be able to pay Florida's public school teachers an average of $100,000 by the end of the decade.

The problem, from the superintendents' point of view, is not whether teachers deserve a six-digit income, but whether districts could realistically afford it.

The rural superintendents and Crist also clashed on other topics including:

• The amount of funding increases public schools should receive.

• The merits of an $850 bonus for teachers this fall.

• Scheduling problems resulting from delays in getting back mandatory standardized test scores.

• Requirements for another audit for each district.

• Teacher recruitment plans.

"The Legislature increased our accountability while they were decreasing the amount of money we have discretion to spend," said Gilchrist County Superintendent Don Thomas, who recently hosted a meeting with superintendents from Columbia, Dixie, Levy and Lafayette counties to discuss the actions the Legislature took this spring and their implications.

Crist has repeatedly pointed out that the Legislature approved an $826 million funding increase for education this coming school year, compared with a $1.1 billion increase a year ago. Superintendents said the $826 million figure is misleading because it includes students from kindergarten through college, while the previous year's increase was only for students from kindergarten through high school.

Crist said he doesn't think the figures are misleading.

Dixie County Superintendent Dennis Bennett said the problem would not have been so bad if Crist had been more candid about the budget.

"But he put a spin on this for the public, and now we have to go back to our districts and cut personnel and scale back programs and explain to the public why we have to do that," Bennett said. "The Legislature and Department of Education want to micro-manage school districts, then hold us accountable for things we will no longer have control over."

For example, the state has promised that all teachers who return to the classroom in the fall and have a satisfactory review from the just-completed school year will get a one-time, $850 bonus by mid-October.

"That's where most of the increase will go that they keep telling us about in Tallahassee," said Columbia County Superintendent Michael Flanagan.

Districts do not have a choice in the matter.

"This is not subject to school board discretion," said Judy Preston, director of planning, budgets and reporting for Brevard County Public Schools, who recently addressed Alachua County School Board members at a legislative workshop. The bonus money is non-negotiable, cannot be included in a district's salary schedule and does not count toward retirement.

Preston said bonus money would have been enough to give every teacher a 2.3 percent across-the-board pay raise.

Crist said districts still have the option to give teachers raises, just not using the bonus money.

"Those decisions are made at the local level, and the school boards need to make the financial decisions necessary to find money for raises in their budgets," Crist said.

According to the Florida Department of Education, the average public school teacher made $38,230 during the just-completed school year, which was up 4.1 percent or $1,508 from the year before. By doing a little math, the superintendents pointed out that even if the percentage increase remains the same until 2010, teachers will only be making $54,933 by the end of the decade, just over half of what Crist claimed they should be paid.

According to Crist, the $100,000 goal is realistic, but if district's don't try, they won't reach that salary level.

"The CPI (Consumer Price Index) for last 30 years is 5.5. to 5.7 percent per year," Crist said.

"So use the same equation for the next 10 years and the number you arrive at is just over $101,000. We will reach that level just based on the growth we have enjoyed in Florida. Remember that in 1985, the state's budget was $15 billion and today it is $50 billion."

Not only do the superintendents believe they won't have the money to triple salaries into the next decade, they are wondering where they will get the people to cash the paychecks.

Florida has been short of math, science and special education teachers for years, especially at the high school level.

"A young person coming out of college with a math degree is not going to take a job for $24,000 or $26,000 a year teaching high school when they could make almost twice that in private industry," Thomas said. "So what the state has done, instead of helping us figure out how to attract people to making a career out of teaching and helping us to raise salaries, is to take a Band-aid approach."

Temporary solutions
Recent campaigns by the Florida Department of Education to recruit teachers from retired military personnel and retired personnel from other fields create only temporary solutions or a long-term problem, Thomas said.

"Those may be people who are willing to teach for five years or more, but what happens when they retire from teaching? There still won't be anyone to replace them in math and science and other areas of critical need," Thomas said.

The problem has gotten so bad in Levy County that Superintendent Cliff Norris said one high school has gone for two years without being able to hire a teacher certified to teach higher math courses such as calculus.

Norris said it looks on paper as if his 12 schools would be getting a $496,000 increase in funding this year, the lowest increase in the past decade, but still sufficient to increase teacher salaries.

"But once you take out the $263,000 in categoricals (which is money mandated to be spent in specific categories) that the state is mandating this year, the increase is only $233,000," Norris said.

"Then you have to factor in other things for that money, like rising gas prices for our buses and increases in electrical costs - and pretty soon you have nothing left."

Among the plans Crist and the state Legislature want districts to use to find money in their budgets is something called Sharpening the Pencil, which requires school districts to undergo third-party financial management reviews every five years.

"Now that would be on top of the audits and reviews we are already required to do and pay for," said Dixie County Superintendent Dennis Bennett as he ticked off those he could remember in just a minute or two - auditor general, full-time equivalent, programs, financial, transportation, special projects, internal accounts, food service, exceptional students education, equity and retirement.

Crist claimed Sharpen the Pencil will be the first state-mandated audit for districts. What concerns superintendents is how the audit results will be used.

"What will happen - we suspect - is that if a district has this management review and the people who are doing it say we should do something exactly to the minimums set by the state, we will be required to do that," Thomas said.

"Take busing for example. If we are providing bus transportation for elementary students who have to cross a busy highway even though they live within a mile of the school, then the management review team comes in and says we shouldn't be doing that because the child lives within the mile, that means the state reviewers are setting policy, not the school board - and that's micro-management."

Scheduling problems
Another looming problem is scheduling. Test results for some standardized tests will not be returned to the schools until August and by then many districts have already begun their classes.

Crist said this should not be a problem because schools have been told about it for several months. Superintendents disagree.

"Because the state can't get the scores to us in a timely manner, we don't know how many kids may need remedial help, and we may wind up rescheduling a lot of people after school has started," said Lafayette County Superintendent Fred Ward. While that might not seem to be a major problem, it creates massive scheduling problems for students, teachers and rooms that will disrupt the previously scheduled classes for those three groups.

Bennett said he and the other superintendents got together in a group to publicly air their disappointment with Crist and the Legislature because they are frustrated.

"It seems like this new commissioner is turning a deaf ear to education, and the public needs to hear the other side of some of these things that sound so wonderful, like the $100,000 teacher salaries and more accountability . . . If one of us would tell you things, you might think we were crying wolf, but with several of us speaking out, we hope the public will consider the other side."

"Charlie Crist needs to stand up for us in Tallahassee, and that hasn't happened." Bennett said.

Crist, who said education has always been "near and dear to my heart," said he has 17 months remaining in his appointed term before the position disappears under the state's education overhaul.

His next career move is a run for state attorney general.

He opened a campaign account for that purpose in April.

Karen Voyles can be reached at (352) 486-5058 or Karen.voyles@gainesvillesun.com.

See June 17, 2001, issue of Gainesville Sun for original article.