Forget the post-legislative hype, the press conferences and the staged photo opportunities with schoolchildren. The real story in Florida public schools this year is being told in classroom buildings where staff is being cut and educators are being second-guessed.

The real story is playing out in districts such as Pinellas County, where last week the School Board was forced to order a 2 percent cutback in all district offices, 10 percent cuts in discretionary school spending and staff reductions at every single school.

The district next year will receive a 1.6 percent increase in funding, an increase that is supposed to cover pay raises, inflation costs, rising health insurance, soaring fuel costs, and any new initiatives. The fine print is even more revealing: Pinellas will actually receive $11.9-million less in state revenue next year, which is to be offset by a required $22.5-million hike in local property taxes.

"In my 14 years here as chief business officer, I have never before seen this situation arise," an exasperated Lansing Johansen wrote to the board. "This will be very difficult to explain to our local taxpayers."

Indeed it will. But Johansen has no cause for explanation. Gov. Jeb Bush and the State Legislature do.

Bush and Education Commissioner Charlie Crist have bragged about a 6.3 percent increase in the education appropriation for next year, with Crist saying that "the Legislature has made good on its commitment to fully fund our public education system." But that figure is more than misleading; it's dishonest. The educational budget increase includes $113-million in A+

award money that was budgeted in a different category last year, $177-million to cover 50,404 new students and $295-million for inflation. That leaves public schools statewide with an extra $154-million this coming year -- a 1.3 percent increase.

This is how they treat the governor's "highest priority"?

The money, unfortunately, is not the only legislative insult hurled at public schools this year. A conservative governor and Legislature that otherwise have preached local control are treating school boards, superintendents, principals and teachers as though they had no clue how to do their jobs.

Crist pushed a "Sharpening the Pencil" bill that calls for third-party audits of every school district, and he says that any school board not properly heeding the audit's advice could be summoned before the Legislature to explain why. A "Dollars to the Classroom" bill prescribes formulas on how to spend money in each school and in some cases tells principals they can't hire people such as security officers or media specialists or technology advisers. It also punishes districts for students who are held back a grade, which is a practice that was expanded in 1999 when the Legislature ordered an end to "social" promotion. Another bill tells teachers to change their grading scale for tests and would put the new scale into statute.

Not content that schools are performing increasingly well on the standardized tests that define Bush's A+

Plan, the Legislature also tried to expand vouchers beyond the framework of school improvement. It approved a plan to give vouchers to disabled students and poor students even when the public schools they are attending are judged to be doing a good job. The vouchers to poor students come in the back door, through a dollar-for-dollar corporate tax break to companies that give money for private school vouchers. As if to underscore their hypocrisy, lawmakers refused an amendment that would have extended the same tax breaks for donations to public schools.

These are not easy times for education. Some of the students our schools must teach come from broken homes, from poverty. They may not have parents to help guide their homework, may be exposed to violence that hardens them, may speak a different language, or may have physical or emotional handicaps. At the same time, many special programs have been dropped, an instructional period was eliminated from middle and high schools, classroom sizes have grown larger, and school districts are facing a shortage of teachers.

Those challenging circumstances make the current legislative hostility to public schools all the more galling. In the three legislative sessions since Bush became governor, the state has handed out $1.7-billion in tax breaks. Yet this year it could afford only $154-million extra to run the schools. That's the real story of education in Florida, and any teacher can tell you what it means.

"It's just a real tragedy that when schools have worked so hard to bring ourselves up to a higher level and now it's pulled out from under us," says Largo High School principal Barbara Thornton, who is being forced to increase class sizes for students struggling with reading and math. "People get discouraged over that."

Discouraged is a polite description. As more people find out the truth about what is happening to Florida public schools in this era of legislative antipathy, they may be repulsed.

Recent coverage

Part one: Squeezing universities (May 20, 2001)

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