John Dick, member of the Monroe County School Board, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the district.
The district had another successful graduation.
Dick said, “It’s amazing what the community does for these students here. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it just seems to get better and better each year. This year, it seemed like the three high schools have had a larger class than previously, and the community stepped up and provide more money. Just unbelievable. So I thank them from the students and the staff of the schools to the community for what they’ve done.”
There will be a school board meeting tomorrow in Key West at 5 p.m.
Dick said, “One of the things on the agenda is the renewal. Actually, there’s a lot of renewals this time of the year. We renew contracts we have with different organizations for the upcoming school year, and one of the ones we’re renewing is with the sheriff’s office and the city of Key West for the SROs, the school resource officer. These are the armed police staff that we have in our schools to make sure if there’s any intrusion, we are kept safe. And we’re very proud of that. Here’s what the cost is going to be this year. It’s $1.4 million from the city of Key West, and $1.8 million from Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. So that’s $3.2 million. Now this is required. We have to have SROs in the school. Now, what the state gives us is they call Safe Schools allocation, and that’s money to pay for this and/or upgrades of school safety requirements, meaning some of the fencing, some of the locks, things that we had to do, video to enhance our school safety. Well, this year coming up, the state of Florida, for the upcoming school year, for the school safety is going to give Monroe County $1.048 million. So you see, there’s the big difference there. We’re going to pay out 3.2. So a couple of years ago, when this first came upon us, instead of just taking that funding from the general fund, we’re forced to do it, which it needed to be done, they could have said, well, they could make the sheriffs pay for it and the city of Key West. But no matter what, wherever it comes from, it’s coming from tax dollars. So I said, let’s ask the community if they would step forward and give us a little extra funding based upon what the costs were and I stipulated that at the end of every year, we would add up the cost that we paid, how much we got from the from the tax increase, and if there was a difference, we could lower it for the following year or raise it if we needed. We did say that the most we would take would be .0625, which doesn’t make a big deal in somebody’s tax bill, but if we had to take a bite of $3.3 million out of our general fund, it would have to lower salaries to our employees. So what’s happened is, this has worked fine. Fact is, we have never taken the .0625. I think this last past year, we’re at .05. So when this full school year is over, which is June 30, we will then determine exactly how much we paid to the different sheriff’s offices for this current year and see what we took in on the tax part, on the .06 and we’ll adjust for the following year, whether we go up or down, we’ll see, but we’ll put that out on a school board agenda for the public to see. And I thank the public. They came forward and said, yes, we would pay that, take that little bit of a raise to prevent us from lowering our salaries. And again, this is this great community, step up and they support their school district.”
There is still no state budget, though.
Dick said, “I know I got a report the other day that it was solved, it was agreed, but I guess that was just the House, and now it’s back and forth. Hey maybe Florida wants to compete with the federal government, see who comes in last, getting a budget. The trouble is we’re going to start a new school year without knowing how much money we get. It’s a problem because we have to hire people. All the school districts are in the same bind because of the school year. We can’t have the same fiscal year that the county and the other organizations can have, so we’re controlled by the student coming in and leaving. We’re well used to it, and we can handle it.”
The district has selected a new superintendent.
Dick said, “We’ve been back and forth a little bit with him. I would expect we’d come to an agreement, of course, when you’re in negotiations, one side wants more, the other side wants to give less. At some point the two will meet in the middle, but he knew where our salary level was. That was advertised and we have to be fiscally conservative and do the best we can, but I do believe we’ll come to an agreement with Mr. Tierney, so I expect that to happen soon.”
Summer classes are happening right now.
Dick said, “The schools don’t shut down and close up for two months. Of course, it’s a perfect time for the maintenance department to get in and do all the things that they need to get going. Of course, things that are of necessity are done during the school year, but it’s tough. When you have students around, you don’t want to be disrupting classes. So some of the schools are empty, of course, and some of them are providing summer school or summer rec. But even those schools, there’s still plenty of empty space in the schools, because there’s nowhere near the amount of students as during the school year. So they get the painting jobs done. Of course, constant, always upgrading and going through the air conditioning. Because I remember too many times over the beginning of the school years, you get the students in and the air conditioner’s not working. And boy, oh boy, when August air conditioning is not working, it’s not a good scenario.”