The Leon County School system has spent about $270 million dollars on its public schools in the current budget. And according to district officials, that number is not expected to change much for the upcoming year. Even though Governor Rick Scott touted an extra billion dollars for education statewide, Lynn Hatter reports the impact of that money at the local level isn’t doing much for Leon County’s bottom line.
Leon County Public Schools will receive an extra $8 million as part of its share of the state’s billion dollar education budget increase. But the district’s Chief Financial Officer Merrill Wimberly, says that doesn’t mean there’s a lot of extra money to go around.
“A lot of these other agencies got cut and we’re essentially where we were. So we came out better than most.”
Leon County’s share of the education budget increase includes $2.5 million to offset a drop in property taxes, and another $2.7 million to cover an increase in students. Wimberly says once the district is done filling its budget holes, the $8 million dollar increase looks more like $1.5 million. Still, he says he’s not complaining.
“But we do need to be accurate in what we say. I don’t want to give the impression that we had this windfall.”
Leon County School officials heard the first of several presentations on the district’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Board member Dee Crumpler says with all the talk about the legislature’s “billion dollar” increase for education, he’s concerned people will think that means the school district will have lots of extra money floating around.
“What we have to do is remind folks that we’re basically, as you heard the district finance folks say, we’re going to have the same amount of money we’ve had over the last couple of years, and that’s less than the money we’ve had over the last ten years.”
The district is expecting it will spend about $270 million dollars in the upcoming fiscal year, a figure largely unchanged from the year before. That’s more than $110 million dollars less than what was spent on Leon County public schools a decade ago. The school board will continue its budget review process throughout the summer, and expects to approve a new budget for the upcoming fiscal year in September.
