Demystifying the Florida education finance program

BY JOHN ANDOLA

NEWS WRITER

If you are lucky enough to be retired and on Medicare, each month you receive a summary of medical billing related to your doctor and hospital visits, charges for medical tests and procedures, etc. It reads something like this: your doctor charged $489 for an office visit, Medicare approved $176, Medicare actually paid your doctor $114 and you may be billed $72 (for which you never receive a bill). Then you get another similar financial summary from you secondary medical provider. All of which you probably understand almost nothing.

The Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) is just a bit more complex than medical billing, but there are some basics one may really want to understand before making any assumptions. Essentially, the state, through state laws and Department of Education regulations, directs the county school district on how to develop its budget and how much of the base allocation (after certain adjustments) the county must raise through local taxes in order to qualify for state funds.

The FEFP is the funding formula adopted by the Legislature in 1973 to allocate funds appropriated to school districts for K-12 public school operations. To equalize educational opportunities throughout the state, the FEFP formula recognizes specific area differences throughout the state and makes financial adjustments to account for them.

These categories include: (1) varying local property tax bases; (2) varying education program costs; (3) varying costs of living; and (4) varying costs for equivalent educational programs due to sparsity and dispersion of the student population. The FEFP uses at least 21 specific factors to analyze the details of these four directives to determine exactly how much funding each school district will receive

The number of students enrolled in Monroe County Schools is used to determine a portion of the County’s school budget.  The actual enrollment is then adjusted by certain cost factors, and then multiplied by the state-determined base allocation of $3,752.30 per student. After the county’s student enrollment is adjusted, the district is credited with 8,674.89 students or Weighted Full Time Equivalents (WFTEs).

That enrollment figure is then multiplied by the state per student allocation to give a base FEFP of $33,430,990.  To this figure the state adds various amounts to satisfy state requirements for that number of students for state initiatives regarding class size, safe schools, supplemental instruction, supplemental reading allocation, ESE guaranteed allocation, teacher classroom supplies, transportation, instructional materials and teacher salary increases.

After all the adjustments, including a supplement for declining enrollment, the total FEFP for Monroe County is now $42,301,721.The state then tells the district it must raise 90% of that figure locally ($38,066,828) in order to be eligible to receive any state dollars. Some school districts may have to raise only 10% of their FEFP because the value of the property in those districts is so low they would not be able to raise the funds a county like Monroe can raise because of its very high tax base.

When Monroe County raises the required 90% of the FEFP through taxes, the state then provides the district with $4,230,172 (10% of the FEFP), an additional $9,234,543 (to reduce class size according to state mandates) and $518,154, which is Monroe County’s share of the state lottery. To meet the entire budget of $87,298,563 the district must raise yet an additional $35,244,145. The total state contribution to the $87,298,563 budget is $13,982,869 or 16% of the total budget.

Next week: how to read your tax bill.

 

 

 

 

 

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