2024 budget hit cost Duval schools 400 teachers. Why could 2025 be a bigger problem?

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | By Steve Patterson | July 30, 2024

Already reckoning with the loss of almost 400 teaching jobs they couldn’t afford, Duval County school administrators are seeking ways to manage additional costs coming after the school year that starts next month.

“We’ll be OK at the end of this year,” school system Chief Financial Officer Ronald Fagan told School Board members during a workshop this month. “…The problem’s going to be the following year.”

The board will hold a public hearing Tuesday as an early step in approving its 2024-25 budget and a property tax rate that’s slightly lower than last year’s because the state cut a millage that’s required of local school districts.

A final board vote on the budget won’t happen until September.

Teacher Paula Life details part of a lesson for students at Terry Parker High School in this 2005 photo. Hundreds of teacher jobs have been eliminated in the Duval County school district’s 2024-25 draft budget.

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Budget managers strengthened the school district’s finances by harvesting leftover cash from special-purpose accounts to redirect $19.2 million in one-time money into the district’s general fund, adding to a funding cushion that’s expected to total $170 million for the budget year that ended June 30. The new budget year started July 1, but the budget is finalized later and some accounts for 2023-24 needed time to be finalized.

That extra funding cushion will help the school district’s footing during the 2024-25 budget year, but a report Fagan shared with the board described a “high probability” after then that the district’s fund balance could drop below a 3% standard the state sets to ensure districts are financially sound.

Staying above that threshold is a key priority for school administrators.

“I can’t even tell you what the implications are of going below 3% because it’s a number that superintendents and school boards hide from,” Superintendent Christopher Bernier told board members, saying it would trigger a level of state oversight “we just don’t need.”

If the $170 million fund projection holds up, the district’s fund balance should have ended 2023-24 with a cushion equal to 9% of its revenue.

Keeping a comfortable margin comes with real pain in the 2024-25 school year, however, including the decision to cut hundreds of jobs that were previously paid for by pandemic-era federal grants called ESSER funds. The last ESSER grants expire Sept. 30.

Safety Patrol members head to their posts before other students arrive at Loretto Elementary School in Mandarin in this photo from the first day of school in 2021.

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With that money gone and more families signing up for payments through the state Family Empowerment Scholarship program instead of classes in traditional public schools, the 2024-25 budget is drafted to eliminate 403 teacher and school counselor jobs, add three others in art, music and physical education, and slightly change the number of paraprofessionals, principals and clerical employees.

Many changes were effectively finalized early this month, when the board approved a roster of school-based staff reappointed to their jobs for another year.

Another 190 division-based jobs — support roles centered at the school district’s Southbank headquarters — were also slated to be eliminated in 2024-25.

With those payroll changes already decided, Bernier has begun outlining steps to be sure the district gets money it deserves and makes the most out of it.

Those ranged from meticulous, plodding completion of student attendance counts reported to the state to receive per-pupil funding to tweaking schedules of part-time high school students; revisiting policies controlling school district spending on bus routes; to big-picture decisions about which schools should be closed to get maximum benefit of each classroom dollar.

Getting those details right will be important for the school district’s finances, he told the board.

“When 85% of your money or more is in salaries, without some of these other decisions … the only place we’ll have to turn to prevent a less-than-3% [fund balance] is to our people,” he said.

“And that I think…is not the tenable position that any of you want to be in.”

Bernier, who was sworn into his job this month, said it’s a good sign that concerns about the next year’s budget are being raised now, instead of going unnoticed until the spring, when there’s only time for last-minute desperation.

Fagan told the board the extra time could make a real difference in working out solutions. “We have some time to breathe. We have some time to strategize,” he said.