MARION COUNTY, Fla. – Just as several Central Florida school districts are dealing with budget deficits, Marion County Public Schools is facing one of its own.
MCPS is currently facing a $64 million budget deficit. The district has been working for months on ways to either close or reduce the deficit.
“My first reaction was, is this attainable,” said MCPS Interim Superintendent, Danielle Brewer. “Can we find $64 million and still maintain the expectations that we want for all of our students and staff to have a successful school year?”
Brewer said the district made several recommendations to try and lower the deficit.
“We immediately recommended cutting our department budgets by 20%, reducing the substitute budget by 1%” Brewer said.
According to the district, cutting department budgets by 20% would save the district $10 million and reducing the substitute budget from 3% to 2% would save the district an additional $2 million.
The district’s recommendation also included increasing class sizes across all grade levels, adjusting school staffing ratios in terms of paraprofessionals including ESOL and special needs paraprofessionals, and requesting the board release half of its committed fund balance. Brewer said the committed fund balance is essentially rainy day fund.
All together these and other recommendations would help close the deficit by more than half.
“Our goal was to impact programs and any other possible vacancies, not filling positions, to avoid layoffs,” Brewer said. “There could be that possibility that we have have layoffs. We will have all of those determinations completed by this week.”
While other Central Florida school districts attribute budget deficits to lower enrollment, that’s not the case in Marion County.
“We are losing money in terms of the Family Empowerment Scholarship,” Brewer said. “Students that have school choice are able to select different schools and receive that funding. So, the money comes, shows as a Marion County revenue, but that money goes directly to these families that have chosen private education and other school choice opportunities.”
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Brewer also says the loss of ESSER funding has played a part.
“We don’t have that money anymore, so we had to take the money that was allocated for certain salaries and positions through esser and now we’re paying those salaries through our general budget,” Brewer said.
Brewer said right now, the district is currently on a hiring freeze.
“We actually had to cancel two of our upcoming hiring fairs because this is not the right time to have people come to Marion County and then not be able to offer them a position with certainty for August,” Brewer said.
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The district said they are also hoping the state budget will provide them with additional funding to help them close to the deficit.