Big Bend schools, taxpayers feel budget pinch

By Jim Ash
Florida Capital Bureau Chief

Bolstered by $907 million in federal stimulus money and $800 million in new fees, lawmakers are boasting that they held public schools harmless from the deep cuts and protected their constituents from tax increases.

"The Senate president said that we would protect education as best as we could and I think we've done that," Senate budget chief JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said an hour after the budget was rolling off the printers on Tuesday.

But a look at county-by-county spending shows that not all districts will feel protected. And neither will taxpayers.

Leon schools will see a $42.05 decrease in per-student funding, dropping from $6,779.70 to $6,737.65.

Jefferson schools will take an even bigger hit, dropping $193.22.

Per-student spending in Madison will fall $73.06. Wakulla schools will fall $58.66.

Gadsden schools will see a slight increase in per-student spending, $28.10.

Homeowners will likely see their school property taxes rise $25 per $100,000 of assessed value under a last-minute compromise that gives school boards the power, with a super-majority vote, to raise an additional quarter mil.

"There's a lot of blue smoke and mirrors in this budget," said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association. "What we got was probably about as good as we could get. Some districts will take a disproportionate hit."

Blanton predicted that all 67 school districts will take advantage of the new taxing authority and that all of them will also go to the voters next year to sustain the property tax hike, as is required by the new compromise.

"And I think the voters will approve," Blanton said. "They understand the situation."

When it became clear that Republican leaders were not willing to raise school property taxes on their own, he lobbied for it. It was only introduced this weekend in the final hours of negotiations between the House and Senate.

The move was necessary, Blanton said, to avoid the bloodbath of cuts to public schools that would have occurred. Lawmakers were faced with a grinding recession, plunging state tax revenues and a $6 billion budget shortfall.

Districts will still face layoffs, but classrooms should largely be spared, Blanton said.

"Once again, the Legislature has shifted the responsibility to local school boards, but without that, it would have been a whole lot worse," he said.

Senate Finance and Tax Chairman Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, considers the final outcome a victory in light of the deeper cuts schools could have faced.

"I'm happy with it, given the economy," he said. "You hate to see any cuts but it could have been so much worse."

But Rep. Leonard Bembry, D-Greenville, said there isn't much to brag about. Big Bend schools are particularly hit because of declining enrollment, he said.

"It's not something I'd write home to mama about," he said.