Monroe County School Board Member John Dick joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the schools.
Even though we had graduations already, summer school is starting.
Dick said, “We do use the time to get projects done. It’s much easier without children in some schools, because not all the schools are operating summer school, but we have summer school in each of the areas. But we get a lot of painting done, which is great to get done during the summer, of course, it’s tough on the painters, it’s a little hot painting, but I’ve done plenty of that myself during the summer, but we get things done, and again, we have a school board meeting tomorrow, so the district office and all that, they stay open and they’re constantly working, because we have to prepare for the next year, and go through the budget and all that. Tomorrow, we have a lot of contracts that have to be renewed and settled for the upcoming school year. So, there’s a lot happening. We have a couple of board meetings throughout the summer, and as I say, one of them is tomorrow in Key West at 5o’clock.”
A major topic of discussion will be school funding and the cost of providing School Resource Officers (SROs) at every campus.
Dick said, “If there’s students in the school, we have to have the policemen there, and then they give us funding for that, they call it Safe Schools funding, and they’ll give us that. Last year they gave us a little over a million dollars. We expect probably this year we’ll get 1.1 million something like that. But on our agenda tomorrow is our contracts with the Key West Police for the SROs and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, so the Sheriff’s Department contract is 2.1 million, and the Key West is 1.5 million, so $3.6 million for SROs is what the school district is going to pay, and the state’s given us 1,100,000. We had to go to the taxpayers and ask them to help us out with that, and they had. But the state can say, oh, lower your millages, but we had a raise on millage for that, because the state didn’t give us enough money.”
Also on the agenda is the contract with AHEC.
Dick said, “They have clinics in many of our schools, and now they have the bus that goes around, the dental bus, and they have in some of the places they have a dental chair, so they do a lot of great things for our kids and even for the staff, but when AHEC first came around, they came to me and said, John, we have this great thing that that can go in the school district, we can provide health care and all that and no cost to you at all, no cost ever, and that’s the way it started, but then as time went along their funding came from the state and the state kept cutting it and cutting it and cutting it, so they cut the funding and we pick it up, so our contract with AAC on the agenda tomorrow is $187,000. Again, we pick up the cost of things when the state backs off, but then at the same time they want to tell you lower your millage rates, well pay the thing you want us to do and set up, so it’s all a little bit of a shell game, but again, no matter what, the school district, we’ve lowered our property taxes a couple of times over the years since I’ve been on the board, we did it a couple times, not a great amount, but it’s anything that I think we can do, we try to help out with the with the property taxes, but again, the costs keep rising, as everybody else knows, in their home, their home budget, and don’t forget the biggest budget thing of school district is 80% of it is personnel, and you can cut the positions, and I push hard for reducing positions, but you can’t cut their salaries, they can’t afford to stay here. It’s a tough call, and it’s easy to say, hey, let’s cut the property taxes, but you really do have to watch what you look at, what you’re doing, and understand it fully. You’ve got to pay your salaries up, as all the private people understand that, too. You’ve got to pay salaries, otherwise the people are going to leave, they can’t stay here.”
Florida lawmakers highlighted increased education spending in the state’s proposed budget, including record per-student funding and additional money for teacher salaries. Dick acknowledged that education funding has increased but argued that Monroe County taxpayers still shoulder much of the financial burden locally.
“Local taxpayers pay 90% of it,” he said. “They tell us how much we have to charge on property tax at a minimum, that’s called a required local effort, and that’s where a lot of that is involved. We then have other places where the school district, the school board actually votes on what we can add to it. Now, a big portion of that is capital spending, capital millage for when we do our buildings, but that’s where we buy busses, major equipment, and build the buildings that we’re doing, but when they tell they send money for teacher salaries, we have to use that money, even though it’s going to be in the required local effort. We have to use that money for what they said, and which we do, and the increases that they give us, if we only use with that, we wouldn’t have any teachers here. We have to add to it, and we are the highest paid teachers in the state, because, as it should be, we are by far the highest cost of living area in the state, so we add to it. I think that when they give us stuff, and then they play a little game and take it away, that’s what I’d like to see them stop doing.”
Despite funding challenges, Dick said the district remains financially stable and continues to scrutinize spending while protecting educational programs. Personnel costs account for roughly 80 percent of the district’s operating budget, making workforce expenses its largest financial commitment.
Dick also praised Superintendent Mark Tierney, calling him a strong addition to the district and expressing confidence in his leadership.
“The school district had a good year,” Dick said, adding that Monroe County schools remain financially sound and continue to benefit from strong community support.