This story was reported in the Orlando Sentinel recently. It is a scenario that is undoubted played out in school districts around the state of Florida.
By Leslie Postal |Sentinel Staff Writer
Courtney Coker graduated from Florida State University in 2006 eager to start work as a music teacher. It wasn’t hard to turn her passion into a paycheck.
“It was teacher shortage, teacher shortage, teacher shortage,” Coker said. “I had no problem finding my first job. Everybody I knew found a job.”
Now, three years later, the band director at Blankner School in Orlando finds herself consumed with fear that her dream job will soon be gone. Like thousands of teachers across Florida, she worries the state’s financial crisis could push her into the ranks of the unemployed.
School districts across the state of Florida are wrestling mightily with the tasks of making draconian cuts in their budgets. School Board members are losing sleep, superintendents are visibly depressed and teachers are all on edge, wondering if they will have jobs in the coming months.
But what are the parents saying? In one county, at least, we don’t know publicly what the parents are saying, except for those who have called their school board members. While Clay County school officials have urged teachers and parents to send them their ideas on how to cut the school budget and to contact their legislators to appeal for more funding for education, there hasn’t been that uproariously loud voice from the community protesting the cuts. At least not yet.
Proposals to trim the Clay County, Fla., school budget for fiscal year 2009-2010 could cause wholesale disruption of both the educational and extracurricular programs in the district, including athletics.
Superintendent Ben Wortham presented School Board members and a room full of concerned educators a list of proposed cuts that would reduce expenses by more than $27 million in the coming school year.
Included in those proposals:
a saving of $11 million by eliminating up to 256 allocations district wide
I am sure that tongues were wagging at water coolers around many schools today, and rightfully so. Cuts are coming. Schools face the prospect of layoffs because of declining enrollments and cutbacks in funding from the state. Several counties have already begun closing underused schools.
As one superintendent said, “It may get uglier before it gets better.”
In Clay County, School Board members will be wrestling with a proposal to eliminate some 115 positions at a savings of $6.3 million for the 2009-2010 school year.
”We have no growth,” Superintendent Ben Wortham told board members at their regular meeting Thursday night. (Jan. 15) as he laid out a plan to reduce the district budget by $10.5 million due to a decline in state funding.
posted
Mar 30, 2009 by Lamar Thames
