Julie Delegal: Lawmakers’ school-funding sleight of hand includes mendacious math

Legislators finally agreed on a budget and are set to vote on it the last day of session, Friday, March 11th. Everyone from Sen. Tom Lee to Rep. Richard Corcoran are trying to make their disgraceful 1% increase look generous, even “historic” as Sen. Don Gaetz brags. The current amount is $7,178.49 which writer Julie Delegal exposes as being well below 2007 levels. What does 2007 funding look like in 2016 dollars? Check out this spot-on analysis: 

There’s nothing like the smell of mendacity in the morning, emanating from the Florida Times Union. Lawmakers announced last week that their education budget comprises the highest per-pupil expenditures in state history.

The recent to-do about per pupil expenditures is a sleight of hand meant to draw our attention away from the fact that lawmakers want to give taxpayer money to private real estate owners.  

In real dollars, not only is the newly proposed figure of $7,178.49 per pupil not record spending, it actually moves us back below 2007 levels.

Rep. Erik Fresen and Sen. Don Gaetz had announced their budget boondoggle to The News Service of Florida after a meeting they held last week, before the latest stalemate.

They acknowledged their $7,178.49 figure was a smidge less than what either the House or the Senate or Gov. Rick Scott had put forth this year.

But it still got billed as “the largest per-student funding amount in state history” by the press.

Here’s the truth: Florida’s school funding began to stagnate in 2007, under Gov. Charlie Crist, at $7,126 per student. The per-pupil figure plummeted to $6,217 under Gov. Rick Scott during the 2010-11 school year, according to an in-depth analysis provided by Politifact in 2015.

But when we take inflation into account, we see what $7,126 amounts to in2016 dollars: $8,142.41.

So for the proposed per-pupil increase to truly be “record spending,” the number would have to be at least a penny more than $8,142.41.

But that’s not all.  When we do the reverse math, that is, when we check to see what the current proposed number ($7,178.49) would be in real dollars in 2007, we actually go backwards, to $6,282.41.

Since 1999, the Legislature has waged war on public schools. Lawmakers have consistently favored, promoted and funded privatization alternatives at the expense of the public institutions that serve most of our students.

Here’s a little background from the Tampa Bay Times on the guy who controls the education-budget purse-strings for the Florida House:

“Fresen is a $150,000-a-year land consultant for Civica, an architecture firm with a specialty in building charter schools. Many of those schools were built for Academica — which has been described as the largest charter school management company in Florida and which counts Fresen’s brother-in-law and sister as executives.”

Fresen wants to give $50 million of the state’s capital spending dollars, derived from the diminishing telephone tax, to the state’s 650 charter schools, leaving only $40 million for Florida’s 3,620 traditional public schools.

Fresen also wants to require districts to share the proceeds of local school levies with charter schools, something only five of the state’s 67 counties do now.

It’s true that privately owned charter schools don’t get the capital improvement dollars raised by local property tax levies that public schools do. But do we care? Should taxpayer money be going to fund private real estate assets?

According to the Duval property appraiser’s website, using 2015 figures, 25 charter schools that receive school grades operate on 17 tax-exempt properties which total approximately $79 million in non-taxable real estate assets.

Those numbers don’t include the newest CharterSchoolsUSA building, which has not yet been appraised, and has not yet received a school grade.

The most valuable tax-exempt charter property is the site of three KIPP schools, a $15 million facility, which serves 834 students.

By comparison, excluding a school for special needs students that sits on community college property, Duval’s District 3, one of seven districts, has a similar number of schools (21) on a similar number of properties (19). District 3’s publicly owned real estate assets add up to approximately $82 million. Calculations also do not include multi-million dollar improvements to Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, as the appraisal for the school has not yet been updated.

The most valuable publicly owned school real estate asset in Duval’s District 3 is Sandalwood, valued at $9.5 million and serving 2,724 students.

The total number of students served by Duval’s privately owned charter schools on 17 properties is 12,455. Subtracting the students who were not in a school where testing was administered, that number is 10,266.

The total number of students served in Duval’s similarly sized District 3, excluding the exceptional student center mentioned above, is 23,623.

Given these numbers, in terms of real estate assets, private charter school owners are sitting on about $7,900 per student, or $6,300 per student if we include the students in schools that have not participated in the Florida Standards Assessment.

The taxpayers, by contrast, own only about $3,500 in real estate assets per non-charter, public school student.

So, for charter owners who are whining about lack of access to capital dollars, the simple answer is to do what homeowners do when they want to improve their properties—either take it out of your own pocket or get an equity loan.

Don’t ask taxpayers to bankroll your private property when Duval’s public schools, whose seven districts serve many more students, are crumbling.

(Calculations were based on enrollment data provided by the Duval County School Board in February, simulated grade information provided by the Florida Department of Education website and DCPS, and 2015 tax-exempt real estate values which are available on the Duval County Property Appraiser’s website.)

Julie Delegal, a University of Florida alumna, is a contributor for Folio Weekly, Jacksonville’s alternative weekly, and writes for the family business, Delegal Law Offices. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Read original Context Florida post here. 

Take action here. 

FL budget – the cowardly push to pass Best & Brightest at any cost

For the second year in a row, cowardly House members steered the Best & Brightest into their budget offer causing another meltdown. It figures that original bill sponsor Rep. Fresen is also the House Conference chair. Sunday night, the budget conference imploded after the House was unable to accept the Senate’s counter-offer which included $22.5M instead of $45M for the grossly biased Best and Brightest $10K teacher bonus. The only item both chambers agreed upon was a disgraceful 1% increase to Florida public schools which barely covers the cost of standing still.

As a result, the budget was bumped from the Conference Committee up to chairs Rep. Richard Corcoran and Sen. Tom Lee.  Well-placed sources report that incoming Speaker of the House Corcoran is frantically lobbying and offering deals to senators to secure votes and keep Best & Brightest alive either on the floor or in Senate budget negotiations.

Why is Rep. Corcoran spending his own political capital on Rep. Fresen?

He sure doesn’t want to. In fact, Best & Brightest was deliberately buried in the House budget offer so Corcoran could avoid trading on any of his personal “must-haves.” The Senate is now on track to consider Train Bill SB 534, loaded up with 30+ amendments, including one from Sen. John Legg to strip Best & Brightest from the bill. It was Legg, Senate sponsor of SB 978/Best & Brightest, who strongly objected Sunday night at the budget conference to its inclusion in the Senate counter offer, making the point that the public would be robbed of a transparent floor debate.

When a train bill like SB 524 arrives on the floor with so many substantive amendments, it’s called “loving a bill to death.” Meaning it contains too many conflicts to ever survive. Best & Brightest only became law because it was part of the 2015 budget. That’s how Florida voters get shafted every session. Neither the House nor Senate is willing to kill a budget bill over a single concept, even when they know that concept is preposterously stupid.

Clearly, Rep. Fresen and Rep. Corcoran are frantic over the prospect of an open Best & Brightest floor debate. Instead, they are making the choice to cling to the cowardly path of letting Best & Brightest hitch a ride on the budget.

The Senate knows better. They should stand firm and reject this deception. They know the House push to pass Best & Brightest at any cost doesn’t add up. It’s either a signal that there’s some additional, hidden purpose for that $45M or it’s a crude power play with the House objective to force the Senate into submission. Either way, it’s not about voters or what’s best for kids.

Take action here.