ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Orange County Public School officials\u00a0say they\u00a0are in limbo as they work to figure out their budget for the upcoming school year.<\/p>\n
This comes as the state has yet to announce its budget for the year.<\/p>\n
One challenge they face is figuring out how much funding the state and the federal government will allocate to the district.<\/p>\n
Factors like declining student enrollment, under-utilized facilities and escalating healthcare costs have forced district leaders to make significant funding reductions across the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During Tuesday’s work session, officials from multiple OCPS divisions discussed the 3% cuts they had to make within their own departments to avoid cutting teacher positions and to protect student services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 3% amounted to approximately $8.3 million, but the general fund reductions that were reflected here totaled approximately $11.5 million,\u201d explained OCPS Chief Financial Officer Doreen Concolino.<\/p>\n
According to Concolino, the $8.3 million cut was part of the district\u2019s 3% reduction.<\/p>\n
However, she says that a number of the district\u2019s departments ended up cutting more than was required, which amounted to $11.5 million.<\/p>\n
A number of grant-funded positions were also cut, which District 6 School Board Member Stephanie Vanos confirmed was tied to the funding reductions from the federal government.<\/p>\n
As a result of these cuts, district leaders talked about needing to explore innovative solutions to attract and retain students in schools.<\/p>\n
Another area of concern that school leaders say could impact students is the funding gap from the state to pay for essential services like transportation.<\/p>\n
Currently, they say the money allocated from the state and the federal government to cover transportation funding covers about 40% of the district\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re given $32 million in our state allocation to cover transportation, but our costs were around $98 million. That\u2019s a $65 million shortfall for that one categorical from the state. Then you\u2019ve got SAFE schools\u2019 allocation, that one\u2019s short. All the categoricals add up to close to $100 million,\u201d said District 7 School Board member Melissa Byrd.<\/p>\n
The board is hoping to get more clarity on this following the special session in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n
State lawmakers will return to the state capitol on May 12 to iron out the details of their budget.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, school district budget discussions are expected to intensify in the coming weeks as they wait for a final budget from the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Orange County Public School officials\u00a0say they\u00a0are in limbo as they work to figure out their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4996,274,113,2287,115,1335,139,141,140,99,3139,278],"class_list":["post-251315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-education","tag-app-top-stories","tag-education","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics","tag-sasha-teman","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251315","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=251315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}