I’m not going to sugarcoat it. 

Right now, our public schools are in a financial crisis that is starting to significantly affect our staff and our students. 

It’s only going to get worse. 

The common thought is that our budget is bloated with too many administrators and we can just cut to make our budget even. I wish that were the case, but there is no pot of money being wasted. 

Our district has the lowest administrative costs per student allocation among all the large urban districts in the state, and we are ranked 12th out of the 67 districts for having the lowest administrative costs. Our district has been very lean for many years and has continued to prioritize dollars at the school level. 

It is good to remember that our operating budget is funded primarily through three buckets.  

The first is the state’s per-student allocation. Of that allocation, 82% of that funding is used directly on school costs — teachers, books, support staff, etc. The rest covers district-wide costs, including a portion for school buses and janitors.  

The second is our one-mil referendum approved by voters. This is primarily used to address the shortfalls in school funding, helping keep arts and sports alive in the schools. We would be in a much more dire place without it.  

The third is special allocations from the state for things like safe schools and transportation. These often have state mandates that are not covered by the allocation.  

As we saw during the discussion on school resource officers last year, the increase in costs for law enforcement makes the safe schools fund significantly underfunded.  

The transportation allocation, our largest, is projected to cover only about 33% of our busing costs this year. We were given $32.8 million, and our costs were $98.2 million. That is a loss of $65 million. This shortfall continues to grow with the significant increase in fuel costs this year.  

In all, the categoricals are about $97.5 million short this year alone.  

Every year, we have dipped into reserves to help pay for these operational costs, but unfortunately, we have used up almost all of the available reserve funds and are quickly running out of options to stay above our 3% state requirement for reserves. 

So where do we cut?  

You’ve seen a few in the media. We have started the process to close seven under-enrolled schools. We cut 200 district positions. We eliminated the safe coordinators in middle and high schools.  

Despite being the lowest among all large urban districts, we have found a way to cut an additional 3% from the district this year. 

It is my hope that OCPS remains as transparent and accountable as possible as we go through this process, but it’s imperative that our community understands how so many factors are all coming together to create a perfect storm threatening public education.   

I hope that we, as a community, can continue to advocate for public schools and for the state to invest in them. Public education provides a place for all children to learn, no matter their income or ability level. We need our public schools to thrive.