School Board votes to reduce property tax millage, but Rockwell expresses concern about $11 million deficit

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the July 24 School Board of Alachua County Special Meeting, the board approved advertising a maximum millage rate of 6.2610 mills, less than the current rate, but Member Sarah Rockwell expressed concern at the $11 million deficit in a tentative budget that does not yet include raises for teachers or a potential loss in revenues due to the number of students who may transfer to private schools in the fall. The final budget will not be set until September, and the property tax rates can be reduced but not increased from the level set at this meeting.

Chair Diyonne McGraw opened the meeting by announcing that five of the district’s seven School Improvement (SI) schools are “out” of Turnaround status, and no schools received a grade of F. McGraw said, “There is still work to be done,” but she thanked district staff for their hard work.

Budget Director Deborah Parrish presented the rolled-back rate, which is the rate that would raise the same amount of revenue as the prior year if applied to the current year’s tax roll, minus adjustments such as new construction. The proposed millage rate is 6.2610 mills, 2.66% lower than the current rate of 6.432 mills and 4.2% higher than the rolled-back rate of 6.0087 mills. Parrish said that rate would raise about $8.6 million more than last year’s property tax revenue.

Parrish said the proposed rate would result in a tax bill of $7.64 more than last year for a property owner with a homesteaded property assessed at $200,000 in 2024.

Chief of Finance Gabrielle Jaremczuk presented a tentative budget summary, with a total budget of $608 million ($336 million for General Fund), about $11 million more than the $597 million in anticipated revenues, transfers, and balances. 

Motion

Member Kay Abbitt made a motion to approve the advertisement of the maximum millage rate, and Rockwell seconded the motion. 

During public input, Alachua County Education Association representative Crystal Tessman said, “This budget does not have enough budgeted for employee raises.” She said the bargaining update sent out to employees by the district was “wildly misleading and clearly propaganda.” ACEA President Carmen Ward said, “This is a really large budget. It’s historically the largest budget that we’ve had, if you don’t count ESSER funds.” She said it was a “lie” to say that everyone is getting a 1% salary step increase “because there are a lot of people getting a zero.”

Student enrollment for the fall is uncertain

McGraw asked whether the student enrollment projection is accurate, and Superintendent Shane Andrew said it is “not accurate,” partially because many kindergarten students have not enrolled yet. He added that the number “doesn’t account for new arrivals to the district, because they may not have enrolled yet, and people who may withdraw their students at the last minute, because people are still in that process, there might be folks that are sending their students to another school that have not withdrawn them yet.”

Jaremczuk said the budget is “tentative,” and a final budget with better revenue and expense estimates will be presented in September.

Rockwell referred to the $11 million deficit and asked whether the budget included the step increase in salaries for teachers or additional funds for the salary package that is currently being negotiated; the answer was that it did not include those items. She added, “So I know this is tentative, and some of these categories of expenditures may be adjusted down, but we have a very large category of expenditure in salary increases that has not even been included, and we already have a nearly $11 million budget shortfall. You know, I don’t have our current fund balance, but based on the last fund balance that we saw with our last budget amendment in May, if we were to transfer that $11 million out of the fund balance, we would already be below the 5% [fund balance] required by board policy.”

Rockwell said she felt like she was being “placed between a rock and a hard place” because the budget had to be approved for advertisement on a tight deadline. She said she had expressed concern about the costs of various initiatives and how they would be paid for and had said “that we would need to make cuts in other areas in order to pay for all of those things… But looking at this budget, it’s clear to me that those cuts were not made. We do not have a balanced budget, and that shortfall is only going to get larger when we add a salary package to it and could potentially get smaller when we get our actual FTE counts because all of these revenues are based on estimates from formulas that the state provides to us that don’t necessarily take into account things that we know are happening locally, such as new private schools opening or existing private schools renovating to have more seats.”

Jaremczuk said the budget would “adjust” as the district gets more accurate information about estimated expenditures and revenues. The tentative budget presented to the School Board at this time last year was balanced.

The motion passed unanimously, with Member Leanetta McNealy on the phone and Member Tina Certain absent.