{"id":217124,"date":"2026-04-03T06:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T06:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/217124\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T06:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T06:04:14","slug":"florida-board-of-education-declares-financial-emergency-in-union-county-school-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/217124\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Board of Education declares financial emergency in Union County School District"},"content":{"rendered":"

An emergency state board has been created to address dwindling funds in the Union and Glades county school districts.<\/p>\n

UNION COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Two of Florida’s public school districts are broke, and the state is stepping in to help.<\/p>\n

The State Board of Education held an emergency meeting<\/a> on Tuesday, creating a financial emergency board to address deteriorating conditions in Union County<\/a> and Glades County after receiving discouraging reports.<\/p>\n

Glades and Union County are small rural areas. Union County has just three public schools, serving just over 2,300 students in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlades County School District and Union County School District have each reported a fund balance that has fallen below 2%, and each has projected a fund balance that will remain below 2% through the end of the current fiscal year. Therefore, both Glades and Union School Districts have been determined to be in a state of financial emergency,” according to an action item brought before the Board.<\/p>\n

When this happens and the districts do not have a plan in place that is anticipated to fix the issue, Florida law\u00a0<\/a>requires the State Board of Education to create a financial emergency board to review the operations, management and finances of each district and create recommendations for remediation.<\/p>\n

In the meeting, the BOE appointed the three-member board, chaired by Vickie DePratter. She is joined on the board by Randy Beach and Kathy Sneads.<\/p>\n

Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas was notified by Union County Schools Superintendent Michael Ripplinger in a March 4 letter that both the assigned and unassigned general fund balances fell below 2% as of June 2025, according to official correspondence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The district’s analysis reflects a projected financial condition ratio of negative 9.14% as of June 30, 2026. I am deeply concerned that the district’s financial condition has continued to deteriorate since the approval of the fiscal recovery plan in March 2025,” Kamoutsas wrote in a March 18 letter.<\/p>\n

He said he believed the district does not have the resources necessary to meet its “ongoing financial obligations and sustain daily operations without external assistance.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The financial situation is taking a toll on district employee benefits.<\/p>\n

The Union County School Board voted unanimously at its March 10 meeting to temporarily freeze its sick leave buyback program and end certain Board-paid benefits “due to current budget constraints and the need to reduce expenditures.”<\/p>\n

Employees wishing to keep those benefits will have to pay for them from their own paycheck deductions.<\/p>\n

First Coast News reached out to Union County School District officials for more information about how funds have depleted and if operations are being impacted. Superintendent Ripplinger responded, saying that the district is “appreciative of the assistance” being provided by the Department of Education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We look forward to working with the board and exploring options together as we work to improve our district’s financial condition,” Ripplinger said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An emergency state board has been created to address dwindling funds in the Union and Glades county school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-217124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}