“We are over-spending up the wazoo”: School Board “skating a razor’s edge” after learning they will receive $6.5 million less than anticipated this fiscal year due to over-estimation of student counts

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their March 14 workshop, the School Board of Alachua County learned that they will receive $6.5 million less than anticipated from the State in the current fiscal year, with another $8 million reduction in the next fiscal year.

Third student count came in below previous estimates

Assistant Superintendent for Finance Gabrielle Jaremczuk told the board that the most recent (third) calculation from the state resulted in a loss of $6,558,539 in funding, compared to the second calculation. An additional challenge, she said, is that in the budget for the current fiscal year, General Fund expenditures exceed revenues by $33.2 million, “largely due to declining enrollment and reduced funding levels.”

Click here for the full budget presentation.

Jaremczuk said that deficit must be made up with fund balance (reserves) and capital fund transfers, and the fund balance is projected to decline throughout the year. It began at 11.55% of the general fund and is now at 4.41%, not counting transfers from the General Fund’s unassigned balance for summer services and staff raises, which will further reduce that ratio. 

State funding reduction is from a combination of students leaving traditional/charter schools and using Family Empowerment Scholarships

As of the most recent calculation, the district lost 720 traditional/charter students and also saw an increase of 635 students using Family Empowerment Scholarships. The State’s projections show a continued decrease in traditional/charter students and more students using Family Empowerment Scholarships in future years.

Jaremczuk said, “In Alachua County alone, more than $38 million in public education funding was diverted to FES scholarships in ’24-’25. Many of those students were never enrolled in public schools, meaning we are losing funding without a corresponding reduction in cost.”

Reduced student counts will make it “increasingly difficult to sustain current staffing levels, programs, and student services.”

Jaremczuk said the projected enrollment for 2025-26 would reduce funding by an additional $8 million. She said this would put “additional strain on our already-tight budget, making it increasingly difficult to sustain current staffing levels, programs, and student services.”

Chair Sarah Rockwell asked Superintendent Kamela Patton to start by outlining “what is currently being done to save money because, you know, when our fund balance drops below 5%, by board policy, the Superintendent has to present a plan to recover that fund balance.”

Plan to recover fund balance will be presented on April 1

Patton said she would bring that to a board meeting because Board Attorney David Delaney told her it would be better to do that than discuss it at a workshop, but “we’ll give you the highlights.” Jaremczuk said the plan would be completed for the April 1 School Board meeting.

Patton said the plan involves “a range of things,” including freezing all new positions and closing “every single vacancy in the district because we have to make up $5 million for this year. It’s not just about next year.” Patton clarified that these are district positions, not teaching positions.

Patton said that historically, the district has stopped hiring for teaching positions on April1, so this year they’re stopping a week early, so “all that’s frozen for the school level.” She said about 200 teachers retire or resign in a typical year, so if they don’t fill those positions, she is “pretty comfortable that our [teachers] will have a position next year – maybe in a different spot, but we’d have a position for everyone.”

She said the budget for every department in the district (“not school sites”) had been examined, and, for example, they saved a million dollars in supplies for district departments. 

District’s initial estimates of student counts were inflated: “We got all that money. We didn’t [put] it aside.”

Patton said part of the problem was that the district didn’t turn in a reduced number of students at the beginning of the year, and “whatever happened last year happened, but… by not having turned in a reduced FTE number, that’s what put us in this position, right? We got all that money. We didn’t [put] it aside.” She said they’re working to come up with the best projection for next year so that doesn’t happen again.

Vu: “Our budget got out of control, and it’s put us in this really terrible fiscal mess.”

Member Thomas Vu thanked Patton for her “frankness about everything. I know we’re not in a great place… The budget we have – I almost call it, like, a Frankenstein. It’s just a bunch of pieced-together things without any intention… Our budget got out of control, and it’s put us in this really terrible fiscal mess… We have been avoiding these really hard decisions for over two decades.”

Vu said he thinks the district is spending too much overhead on keeping under-enrolled schools open and that they need to rezone. He added that he just wanted “to brace people for, like, the hard facts that, like, we do have to make cuts… Our budget has just ballooned.”

Patton: “We are over-spending up the wazoo.”

Patton agreed and said that given the One Mill property tax and half-cent sales taxes approved by voters, “How do we have a budget problem? There’s no way. Other people don’t have either of those, and yet they have magnets and they have art teachers and music teachers… If that tax didn’t pass here, we would be in big trouble… We are over-spending up the wazoo.”

Vu added, “The additional levies that the voters have approved allow us to spend about $2,000 more per student than the state average, and yet, what are we getting for it?”

Certain: “We are on a path that’s unsustainable.”

Member Tina Certain said she’s been saying these things and reminded the board that their approved budget for 2024-25 was $14 million over their projected revenue. She said she had warned against opening a new school (Duval Early Learning Center) and moving positions that were created with ESSER funds to the General Fund. She added, “There were some decisions that should have been made years ago, and they weren’t, and the [One] Mill allowed us to not make those decisions.” She said the district has not reduced staffing as enrollment has declined: “We are on a path that’s unsustainable.”

Certain said the board should be setting goals and priorities right now: “We’re not just doing the DOGE here at the district; that’s not what I’m saying. But we have really got to be very clear and aligned as a [board] as to what we want to see done.”

Certain said the State requirements for safety and security are “unfunded – we don’t get enough in that category to take care of the law enforcement. I am not for arming teachers, but we have got to figure out something different to do because that is now taking up an increasingly higher percentage of our budget.” She reminded the board that those contracts have to be signed by the end of the fiscal year, and they will include increases this year. 

If fund balance drops below 3%, “[The State] will take over the district”

Certain said the fund balance threshold for the state is 3% of the General Fund, and if they don’t maintain that, “[The State] will take over the district…, and they will keep it, and we will have the dickens trying to get it back… Right now, we’re teetering on the edge,… and our employees are demanding pay increases,… but you can’t get blood from a turnip… Some hard decisions have to be made, and we can’t keep kicking the can down the road.”

Jaremczuk said she was “hopeful… It’s going to be hard, but this can be done.”

Rockwell said she mostly agreed with Vu and Certain and said that although board member salaries are set by the State, they don’t have to accept raises, and she pledged to not accept “any raises until our budget is fixed and we can offer better to our faculty and staff.” She said board member salaries are lower than a beginning teacher’s salary, so she’s making less than she was when she was teaching. 

Rockwell: “We are skating a razor’s edge between being above 3% after everything is done this year and being taken over by the State.”

Rockwell said the past two years have been frustrating because she and Certain were “both raising the alarm – ‘We can’t afford to do X, we can’t afford to do Y. What are you cutting to pay for Z?’ – and we were consistently outvoted.” She said there were also votes when Certain dissented but she (Rockwell) had voted for what was recommended by staff because they told her there was money for that: “And I regret that, and I want to take responsibility for that because… we’re going to have to make some really, really hard decisions moving forward. And I understand that people are not going to be happy about some of [those decisions.]… I’m not happy about it, but they’re necessary because, as Ms. Certain noted, we are skating a razor’s edge between being above 3% after everything is done this year and being taken over by the State.”

Patton said the board will soon get a plan for the use of capital funds, but she had been surprised to learn that there is no technology plan: “It’s been pay as you play. It should not be; it should be on a plan that is not hit or miss or ‘Let’s use ESSER funds.'”

Patton: “How do you miss summer school?”

Patton also said that summer school wasn’t included in the budget for this year –  “How do you miss summer school?” – and there is no plan for athletic fields, there is no painting schedule for the schools, and tracks aren’t being replaced.

Member Leanetta McNealy told Jaremczuk that she looked forward to seeing, “maybe by April 1, what the results will be in the collaboration with the City of Gainesville, because we cannot not look at the stadium that’s right down the street – so all of that will be impacting the budget, I’m sure.”

Teacher’s union: district’s pay offer dropped from 1.6% to 1% increase

During public comment on the agenda item, ACEA President Carmen Ward said the union had received a proposal the previous day for a 1% increase, less than the previous offer of a 1.6% increase. She said, “I just will say [it] is reflective of somebody’s priorities, but it needs to be a priority in this new budget to do what is best for the success of every student – and that is to retain excellent educators. And we definitely have a lot of very, very unhappy educators right now.” She said she had heard the “fear-mongering” about the 3% threshold for “decades,… and I have a little fear-mongering to put out there myself, that people are going to leave our district because they can just drive to Marion County and make $2,000 more.”

Rockwell asked Jaremczuk whether the projected fund balance was based on the previous or current salary offers, and Jaremczuk said the union’s previous proposal, which she said was 3.6%, left the fund balance at 2.17%. She said the latest proposal from the union “would also put us below 3%.”

In response to a question from the public about using One Mill funds to give teachers a better raise, Certain said, “Once you start using capital funds for a recurring expense, that puts you in that boat to keep having to tap that money,” and the facilities will continue to deteriorate because capital funds will be reduced.

Vu agreed, “[Using capital funds] can’t be a permanent fix. It can’t be something that we rely on… Those capital funds should be used to give us good school facilities, schools that our kids are proud to go to.”

Patton added that capital expenses are generally one-time expenses, but salaries are recurring. 

Newberry charter school contract update

At the end of the meeting, Patton said the “Newberry folks” had given the district a one-week extension on the proposed contract for the conversion charter school because of spring break. Patton said she appreciated that, and Rockwell said, “Yeah, me, too, it’s good to have a little bit of goodwill there.”