QUESTION: Is the Manatee County School District expecting another budget cut for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year?

ANSWER: Yes. Our initial projection is that we may need to cut an additional $6 million to $15 million depending on what takes place in the upcoming session of the state legislature.

QUESTION: Why is the school district enduring more budget cuts?

ANSWER: For two basic reasons. First, we are expecting some cost increases that we simply can´t avoid. We´re expecting an increase in our retirement contributions, utility cost increases and salary issues that are subject to collective bargaining. Also, we don´t expect that the state will fully fund our Class-Size Amendment costs.

QUESTION: How does funding for the Class-Size Amendment affect our district?

ANSWER: We get an allocation from the state legislature for the Class-Size Amendment based on an allocation provided by the Florida Department of Education. However, we don´t feel like the allocation takes into account all of the different scheduling items that we incur locally. For example, according to the Department of Education we will need 103 more teachers in our district to meet the Class-Size requirements. Our estimate is that we will need 150 teachers to fulfill our Class-Size obligations and the difference in teachers would cost our district approximately $4 million over what we are expecting to receive from the state. But again, it all depends what comes out in the state budget and we certainly don´t know what it´s going to look like yet. At this point, it is all projection.

QUESTION: Is a $6 million to $15 million budget cut for our district for the 2010-2011 school year more than we originally thought?

ANSWER: It is. The state legislature said it was going to hold education harmless; but when you increase the costs for meeting the mandates of the Class-Size Amendment and you keep per-student funding the same, then education is not being held harmless.

QUESTION: Isn´t Gov. Charlie Crist proposing an increase in education funding?

ANSWER: That is what he is proposing. However, the Governor´s proposed budget rarely reflects what ultimately comes out of the legislature.

QUESTION: How does a $6 million to $15 million cut for our district compare to recent years?

ANSWER: The high-water mark for our general operating fund was during the 2007-2008 fiscal year when it was $363.5 million. Our general operating fund budget for the current fiscal year (2009-2010) started at $325.6 million. That´s almost a $38 million decrease in our general operating fund over the last three years.

QUESTION: And we are looking to cut as much as another $15 million?

ANSWER: That´s correct. So our general fund for the 2010-2011 fiscal year is projected to be down to approximately $309 million. We hope it is not that bad, but we need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

QUESTION: Have federal stimulus funds helped our district?

ANSWER: Yes. We received a little over $15 million dollars from the stimulus for the current school year.

QUESTION: How did we use those stimulus funds?

ANSWER: We used it to fund 120 or so positions.

QUESTION: Are we expecting stimulus funds again for the next school year?

ANSWER: Yes, probably about the same amount.

QUESTION: What happens to stimulus funds after next year?

ANSWER: After the 20010-2011 school year, they are pretty much gone.

QUESTION: Will we be going through the same decreases next year?

ANSWER: Next year will be worse because we don´t know how the state is going to replace the $15 million in stimulus funds for our district, which comes to about $1 billion in stimulus funds statewide.

QUESTION: How will we start turning these budget cuts around?

ANSWER: The legislature needs to find a dedicated funding source for the Class-Size Amendment.

QUESTION: What do you mean by that?

ANSWER: The Class-Size Constitutional Amendment passed in 2002 requires class sizes to be reduced to a certain level that has been phased in over the last decade. During the 2010-2011 school year, the amendment calls for hard caps on class sizes of 18 students for kindergarten through third grade; 22 students for grades four through eight and 25 students for grades nine through 12. While the state legislature has been giving us a little more money each year, it is not enough to cover our actual costs. For the 2010-2011 school year, the Department of Education is proposing to give our district an additional $6 million for Class Size. My estimate is that it will cost our district an additional $10 or $11 million to hire enough teachers to meet Class-Size requirements next year.

QUESTION: Is it possible the legislature could modify the Class-Size requirements?

ANSWER: There have already been a couple of bills filed to modify class size pretty much in the manner the Gov. proposed in his budget document. Those bills would maintain the Class-Size requirement at the school average for classrooms as opposed to hard caps on individual classrooms. The bills also allow for a little flexibility in the number of students that can make up individual classrooms. For instance, you could have an individual class in kindergarten through third grade that could be as large as 21, then 27 in grades four through middle school and then possibly as high as 30 students in a class in high school.

QUESTION: Why do we need this flexibility when it comes to class size?

ANSWER: The hard caps for Class Size cause logistical and financial hardships for school districts. It makes it very difficult to provide the high quality education we need for our students. For example, you can´t have a small Advanced Placement (AP) class for students who want and need that kind of instruction because those smaller classes would need to be offset by having a larger regular class.

QUESTION: Doesn´t the state want more students involved in AP courses?

ANSWER: Absolutely. In fact, the state has changed its high school grading formula to encourage students to take more AP classes, honors courses and International Baccalaureate programs.

QUESTION: How much does the Class-Size Amendment cost our district?

ANSWER: To fund Class Size at the class room level, it would be in the neighborhood of $52 million. We received about $46 million this school year.

QUESTION: How will budget cuts impact the classroom?

ANSWER: At this point, it´s hard to say. Our focus is to put more money in the classroom. My fear is that these continued cuts will affect our ability to provide a decent level of service to our schools. In the last two years we´ve eliminated 118 positions; practically no classroom positions. They were either support or administrative. Most of those positions became vacant because of retirements and we chose not to refill them.

QUESTION: Will there be positions eliminated this coming year?

ANSWER: We hope not. We don´t want to propose any, but it may be something that we can´t avoid. We have some areas where we may have a retirement and we will reallocate those resources and not hire that position back but place a position somewhere else.

QUESTION: How does eliminating administrative and support positions impact our schools?

ANSWER: It has a serious affect on our level of service.

QUESTION: Are we looking at other ways to save money?

ANSWER: In our business services division we look at whatever we have available to reduce costs. For instance, we went to paychecks online this year which saved us about $50,000 because we don´t have to print checks and we don´t have to take staff time to sort them out and distribute them. There are other things we continue to look at to reduce the effect on the schools. However the schools rely on us for a lot of information and support services. When we don´t have as many people as we used to have, they either have to kind of muddle through and get it themselves or they have to wait on us.

QUESTION: What about cutbacks at top administrative positions?

ANSWER: At the senior management level, we used to have four assistant superintendents, now we only have three. Then we had an executive director retire and we didn´t refill the position; those duties were assimilated into curriculum and instruction. In the business area, we reformulated job descriptions and gave the finance manager new duties and added some responsibilities to the accounting manager.

QUESTION: Is it possible that any school programs will need to be cut or reduced?

ANSWER: At this point we have not made that determination. A lot of what we offer is mandated by the state. For example, you´ve must offer 30 minutes of Physical Education each day and you must offer so much remediation of students. They state tells us what we have to do each year, and then we have to do it with less money than we had the year before.