Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature like to tell people they
have invested 400 million dollars in school security but what they won’t tell
you is they forced school districts to use money they had earmarked for teacher
raises, paying for rising health costs and numerous other business costs to
fund it. They also won’t tell you to
cover all the increases to fixed costs, they allocated just forty-seven cents
extra per student, or less than the cost of a postage stamp.
In Duval County that comes to a little over sixty thousand dollars
and to give you some scale that is less than the cost of one teacher when you
include salary and benefits. They also did all this while increasing payments
to charter schools and expanding vouchers which will siphon tens of millions
more away from public education.
Superintendent Pat Willis said, Our first priority is the safety and education of our
students. A 47-cent per student increase actually represents a loss of funding
to Duval schools. Utility, health, property insurance, and other business costs
continue to rise for our school district, just as they do for our citizens and
businesses across Duval County. An increase of just 47 cents per student
jeopardizes the funding needed for important student programs, as well as the
increases needed for operating expenses.
Just as troubling is the republican members of the Duval
Delegation, Bean, Byrd, Yarbrough, Fant and Fischer voted to hurt our public
schools by starving them of resources.
Governor Scott has already signed the budget though we can do
something and that is in the future vote for representatives who support and
want to improve our schools rather than dismantle them and mislead the public
about what they are doing.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Not good news. Why was I thinking he would not sign it. :(
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