Funding changes to give school principals greater flexibility
Funding for schools has changed for the 2024-25 school year, giving the School District of Lee County more money and principals more flexibility.
“The new formula is driven off student population and given a dollar amount with requirements,” Budget Director Kelly Letcher said during the school board’s meeting on May 23.
Chief Financial Officer Dr. Ami Desamours said the new allocation was structured overall to drive more resources into schools.
“That looked different. Some were up, some down, depending on projections, populations and circumstances in the school,” she said.
The new allocation put an increase of $20 million into schools.
“This model represents a real interest of driving more dollars to the schools,” Superintendent Dr. Ken Savage said. “Some schools that were, for the lack of better words, over-funded. All in all, the result is a significant increase in the tune of $20 million — substantial.”
The formula is based on full-time equivalent projections for the school and unweighted FTE based on student population. There is additional funding for such things as Exceptional Student Education guarantee, class size and schools that have an above average English for Speakers of Other Languages population.
“Small schools do not generate enough money to handle the required things. We provided an additional allocation for a small school,” Letcher said. “There’s one very small school allocation in order to help them meet some of the requirements and needs.”
Additional allocations were provided for 254 and 255 levels of service, students in self-contained classrooms. She said the current way was not generating enough dollars to provide the teacher and paraprofessional for the classroom.
There are also additional enrichment dollars for such areas as the arts, International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and Cambridge AICE.
“This is the first year we are working through things. The academic services team is working closely with the schools to make sure they are meeting requirements and serving the population the way they should be serving,” Letcher said.
A meeting is held every Monday with the academic services team to go over any requests or any concerns that come from the schools.
“We will work through the summer to make sure the numbers projected to them are aligning with the students,” she said, adding that numbers will also be pulled on day 10 of school and after the October FTE survey to make sure everything is aligned.
Board Member Cathleen Morgan said the allocation is a huge lift for principals and academic services.
“Some principals have a lot more experience doing this than others. There is bias. As soon as you take away guardrails, bias comes in,” she said. “I think this is fantastic that we are doing this — there will be some abuse to the system. I want to make certain that someone is watching the allocations and to ensure we are having the impact we intend.”
Desamours said the point is well taken. She said when it was first rolled out, there were a lot of questions
“Those checks and balances take a lot of work. Will it necessarily be perfect, I am going to say probably not. It took time to put things into place to help us monitor those things that we feel need to be monitored,” she said.
That would include whether resources are utilized most appropriately, which depends on academic services patterns to understand what those are.
“How those numbers help the rubber meet the road,” Desamours said.
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