{"id":237230,"date":"2026-04-18T20:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237230\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T20:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:02:14","slug":"seminole-school-budget-crisis-prompts-staff-field-trip-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237230\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminole school budget crisis prompts staff, field trip cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parents and students at Seminole County Public Schools have been largely shielded from the district\u2019s financial woes this year. Cuts have been marginal, no schools have closed<\/a> and teachers have mostly stayed put.<\/p>\n

But Seminole\u2019s $26.4 million budget deficit got real for many people this week, as a recent district email said it would no longer approve out-of-state and overnight student field trips because of associated costs. Students travel out of state for many reasons, such as athletic and academic competitions that are critically important to participants and their families.<\/p>\n

Oviedo High School\u2019s color guard team, for example, traveled to Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month and won a gold medal at the Winter Guard International World Championships.<\/p>\n

The district quickly walked back the decision following parent backlash, but some in the school community still came to the April 14 board meeting to air their frustrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese trips are not extras. They\u2019re real world education. They expose students to professional environments, higher levels of competition, experiences that shape their future in ways a classroom simply cannot,\u201d said Jennifer Devine, a Winter Springs High School parent, at the meeting.<\/p>\n

Seminole, like many other Florida school districts, faces a massive financial crisis as student enrollment declines by the thousands. The district lost almost 2,000 of its roughly 60,000 students this year, and projects to lose another 2,000 next school year \u2014 losses that hurt Seminole\u2019s bottom line because schools are funded on a per-student basis.<\/p>\n

Neighboring school districts face similar losses and budget deficits as kids use state-paid vouchers to move to private schools and immigrant students flee the system<\/a>.\u00a0Orange County\u2019s district, which is roughly three times Seminole\u2019s size, lost more than 5,000 students and $41 million this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But while Orange opted to shutter seven schools<\/a> to make up the difference, Seminole hasn\u2019t closed any campuses and is looking to avoid doing so.<\/p>\n

Instead, the district is scrutinizing staffing and travel budgets.<\/p>\n

At an April 14 budget work session, Superintendent Serita Beamon said the district was planning to cut more than 280 positions across school and district staff, totaling $23.4 million in savings. Most cuts should be accounted for by retirements and teachers leaving the district on their own, but the extent of the impact won\u2019t be known until next school year.<\/p>\n

Beyond staff cuts, Beamon said the district could find additional savings in cutting back on travel expenses, such as out-of-state travel for teachers to attend professional development, which carries the cost of substitute teachers to fill in for them. Substitute teachers can cost the district upwards of $100 per day per teacher. That\u2019s a big part of the cost for student field trips as well; the district put a total annual price tag of $6 million\u00a0on the teacher backfills.<\/p>\n

The expenses prompted the March 23 email about field trip cuts, but amid the parent backlash Beamon said the restriction would be relaxed to allow schools to demonstrate that they can raise funds to pay both the cost of the field trips themselves, and the cost for substitute teachers. Already, schools fundraise for upwards of a year to cover the cost of large, out-of-state trips.<\/p>\n

As the mother of a student-athlete herself, Superintendent Beamon said she can empathize with parents\u2019 frustrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t see it as a trip that hasn\u2019t been approved. They see it as an opportunity lost. And as a parent, I\u2019ll just say that hurts my heart,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As controversy built ahead of the recent school board meeting, SCPS posted a statement to Facebook clarifying there was \u201cno new policy or \u2018ban\u2019 on out-of-state travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bryan Zimmerman, who spoke at the meeting, called the district\u2019s statement \u201cgarbage\u201d and said the back-and-forth nature of the cuts pushes families away from public schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cA school district that\u2019s facing enrollment issues, there must be a level of common sense that I\u2019m not familiar with because I don\u2019t see a single angle of how this mandate doesn\u2019t encourage parents to go right to Orange County, charters, homeschooling and private schools,\u201d Zimmerman said.<\/p>\n

Robin Dehlinger, the chairwoman of Seminole\u2019s school board, conceded in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel that the changes were \u201cnot well communicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is make sure that as we are in difficult and challenging financial times, we are utilizing our resources to the best advantage of the students. It doesn\u2019t really change anything, in my opinion,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re always going to have these opportunities, and we\u2019re not going to say to our children, \u2018You can\u2019t have these opportunities.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Seminole has tried to protect students from the impacts of its financial woes this year, Dehlinger said. But next year, that might not be possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are getting to a point where we may not be able to fill those deficits,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parents and students at Seminole County Public Schools have been largely shielded from the district\u2019s financial woes this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113,28,114,266,115,139,141,140,1014,109],"class_list":["post-237230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-seminole-county","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237230","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=237230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}