To the editor:<\/p>\n
The scenario from the Lee County School Board and superintendent for the past three years has been teacher shortages, use of uncertified teachers, teacher recruitment etc.<\/p>\n
Suddenly we have teacher layoffs, a 1,940 loss in student population which was blamed mostly on students that moved out of the country!! What is that?\u00a0 One of the district\u2019s ploys seems to be to lay off teachers that the administrators deem not to be team players.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our budget is in $47.7 million deficit. The state has not finalized the budget for 2026-27.\u00a0 They are still in session.\u00a0 We do not have a budget but we lay off teachers.\u00a0 The state-projected allocation per student is set to $9,406 per pupil.\u00a0 Factor in the cost, you have a loss of $18.2 million due to state funding.\u00a0 This is a far cry from $47.7 deficit.<\/p>\n
The superintendent and board are playing budget Bingo.\u00a0 Call the chips:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Use the contingency fund of about $120 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Use the overbudget department line items which are unspent and called back at close of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Remember the State Auditor found the District mishandling funds.<\/p>\n
Bingo:\u00a0\u00a0No budget shortfall.<\/p>\n
I have asked the School Board and Chair, Mr. Persons, to start a referendum to return to an appointed superintendent.\u00a0 It is obvious that an elected superintendent is on-the-job training (OJT). This is the eighth largest school district in Florida.\u00a0 We had an appointed Superintendent with Dr. Bernier.\u00a0 He was doing a good job.\u00a0 Appointed superintendents have skills that an elected superintendent does not have.<\/p>\n
Lou Navarra<\/p>\n
Cape Coral<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: The scenario from the Lee County School Board and superintendent for the past three years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-281486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281486","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=281486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}