On Wednesday, the good news was clear: Pasco County public schools did better than ever on the state Department of Education school report grades.
By Thursday morning, the cheer was beginning to sour as District Chief Financial Officer Chuck Rushe looked over the numbers and identified a puzzler:
In order to reward 34 deserving schools with state-mandated recognition money of $100 per student for improving test scores, the district might be forced to make another $500,000 in budget cuts.
"Oh, Lord!" said Ky Grand, principal of Lacoochee Elementary, where moving from a C to a B made it one of 24 Pasco elementary schools eligible to receive the reward money. "I tell you, I don't know where they're going to cut. The schools, they need what they've got."
Money allocated to the district for school recognition increased from $1.9-million last year to $2.7-million this year, Rushe said. But the total dollars expected to be spent because of increased student performance is $3.2-million.
In the past, the state would fund school awards according to the number of qualifying schools, Rushe said. But a new provision says that if a district has more schools qualifying for the lottery-funded recognition program than the state allotted dollars for, the district is expected to make up the difference with discretionary money typically used for operating expenses.
In Pasco County, Rushe said, that money - down from $3.8-million last year to $2.2-million this year - went to recurring expenses including teachers' salaries and school membership to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation agency. The discretionary pot also is funded with lottery revenue.
Now some of the district's discretionary funds must be paid out in recognition money to the qualifying Pasco schools.
That means the district has to come up with cuts - again.
"It's really good that the schools have done well, and we're pleased," Rushe said. "But at this point, it's a little bit of a dilemma."
The Pasco County School District on Monday approved $10.3-million in budget cuts, including effectively eliminating 94 positions, closing the Energy & Marine Center, increasing athletic fees for students and cutting into the district's reserve fund balance by $1.5-million.
Rep. Heather Fiorentino, R-New Port Richey, said the district should have started planning for schools to make such tremendous gains on the report cards when student scores from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test first started becoming available earlier this summer.
"I would think they would have anticipated that increase," Fiorentino said Thursday. "I think what it's going to do is transfer that money from the district making the decision on how to spend it to the schools making that decision."
Rushe chuckled at the suggestion that administrators could have planned for the number of schools getting the report card grades that they did. "Let me look into my crystal ball," he said.
Altogether, Florida had 60 percent of its graded schools qualifying for recognition funds, according to the state Department of Education's Web site. Calls to the department about the recognition program were not returned Thursday.
Pasco's recent budget cuts came as a result of strapped state funding. Though the district got $22-million more than last year under the 2003-04 budget, about half of that was dedicated to increasing teachers to comply with the new class-size reduction law.
When other newly required expenses were taken into account, Rushe said the district's allocation from the state actually came to about $1.2-million less than last year. That didn't include other budgetary growth such as increases in insurance, retirement and facilities.
For his part, Grand said he would give up Lacoochee Elementary's recognition funds if it meant sparing the district's schools more cutbacks.
Recent funding changes meant 500-student Lacoochee will be down two teachers and two paraprofessionals going into the 2003-04 school year.
"We really don't need more cuts," he said.
- Rebecca Catalanello covers education in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6241 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6241. Her e-mail address is rcatalanello@sptimes.com
