Despite already slashing its budget halfway through this school year, the Miami-Dade County school district is set to make further cuts in 2027-28 amid an “unprecedented” enrollment drop, the district’s financial chief told WLRN.<\/p>\n
Miami-Dade County schools, the third largest district in the country, this academic year had 313,000 students \u2014 13,200 fewer than in the 2024-25 school year. <\/p>\n
Although the district has gone through financial crises in the past, from hurricanes to the 2008 recession, this situation is different, according to district’s Chief Financial Officer Ron Steiger. \u201c\u200aIt’s not unprecedented that we’re dealing with a serious problem,” he said. “What\u2019s unprecedented is this particular problem that we’re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
At $7.4 billion this school year\u2019s budget was already $100 million smaller than the previous year\u2019s. Even so, the district shrunk that even more when it docked the budget by another $89 million halfway through the school year. As Florida lawmakers craft the state budget, MDCPS could potentially cut another $52 million in next school year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
The state requires districts to maintain a reserve level of 3%. Currently, Miami-Dade County schools is below that level. For next year, it asked lawmakers to release one-time extra funding of $21 million to help offset the enrollment drop. <\/p>\n
If the district doesn\u2019t find ways to tighten the belt, then \u201cwe’ll run into the same problem with reserves every year \u2014 and we can’t,\u201d Steiger said at a March committee meeting with school board members and the superintendent. \u201cWe have to be able to fix this once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
That means the district will have \u201cto do business differently than we’ve ever done it before,\u201d Steiger said.<\/p>\n
Thinning enrollment<\/p>\n
Public school systems all over the country are dealing with thinning enrollment. In Florida, the reason has been largely attributed to parents increasingly opting for charter and private schools, which have become more popular thanks to an expansion of vouchers. But Miami-Dade County district officials push back against this. Instead, they say it\u2019s because of a decrease in immigrant families moving to South Florida.<\/p>\n
The state funds the district based on enrollment \u2014 the more students a district has, the more money it receives. Every year, districts predict how many students they expect to leave the district. Multiple factors are considered, including rising cost of living pushing families out and birth rate fluctuations. This school year\u2019s enrollment calculation was off by thousands. Not because of students leaving, the superintendent says, but because there\u2019s no incoming group to offset the loss.<\/p>\n