How Manatee public schools can do even more with less: Part IV

We are in the slow-moving early stages of the 60-day Florida Legislative Session which began on March 2.  I liken our sessions to the short course speed skating Olympic competitions in which four incredibly gifted athletes skate clockwise in an almost horizontal manner, starting slowly and ending in a blindingly fast scramble.  

There are more than a thousand bills currently in both the House and Senate, only one of which, the Florida budget bill, must be passed before May 1.

Failing passage by April 30, the Session will be extended until budget concerns are resolved.  

Not much has been done to refine the state budget for many years.  In 2002, Bradenton’s Senate President John McKay tried to get the sales tax exemptions reviewed but was unsuccessful.  Since puny budgets are not characteristic of strong states, we continue to make do with what our sales tax and property tax can generate and invite distressing comparisons to Mississippi .  

Yours truly, Manatee County’s lobbyist at the time, did get involved on the edges of a budget tweak in the 2004 Session, centering upon a district cost differential (DCD) which was slanted unfairly to favor the politically powerful counties of Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.  The inequities were costing the Manatee County schools millions each year.  

During pre-session committee meetings, I looked for DCD support from Representatives Reagan and Galvano.  To say that they were disinterested would be an understatement.  

It then occurred to me that I was asking for help from men who did not have a public service mentality, when in fact I needed a person capable of putting a cause before his or her political safety.  Aware that Senator Bennett had served with distinction in Viet Nam, I pointed out the DCD inequities to him.

After checking my conclusions, Bennett carried the DCD flag against the legislators from the three southeastern counties, challenging DCD proponents with facts which I provided.  

The response from Dade-Palm Beach-Broward was that the DCD is the way we want it and you (the other 64 counties) don’t have the votes to change it.

They repeated this mantra often enough that everyone accepted this as gospel. Everyone, that is, except Senator Bennett and me.  Though he has long since quit working for the people who elected him aside from those with special interests, the 2004 version of Senator Bennett was most impressive.  His message was compelling as he spoke eloquently of how millions of dollars were being diverted from other regions of the state to southeast Florida.  The gasps from the large crowd of committee members, lobbyists, and journalists were audible, not in surprise because the DCD was unfair (everyone knew that) but because it was viewed as a matter not to be discussed.

One of his challengers was then State Senator Deborah Wasserman Schultz (D) of Weston (Fort Lauderdale), now a high-ranking Democratic U. S. House member.  Still only forty-three, Schultz appears frequently on political talk shows.  In a 2004 Senate Education meeting, she scolded Bennett for daring to meddle with the sacred DCD and then said that ”pigs would fly“ before DCD changes would be made.  However, the seeds for change had been sown.  The Jacksonville Journal Carrier and other newspapers picked up a DCD brief which I had written and circulated, an article which had been printed initially as an editorial in the Bradenton Herald.  

Still, the matter would have died there if Bennett had not had a friend in the late Jim King of Jacksonville, then Senate President, a combative former New Yorker and arguably the best politician working in Tallahassee at that time, who was surprised to discover that the northeastern portion of the state was being fleeced even more savagely than Manatee County.  His chief aide asked me to meet with northeastern legislators and staffers to explain the regression equation used at the University of Florida to redistribute tax dollars under the DCD.  I was happy to make the rounds, and at the very end of the 2004 Session, which also was the end of King’s term as Senate president, he made changes which redistributed tens of millions of 2004-05 dollars throughout the state, four million to Manatee County alone.  

With my persistence, Senator Bennett’s initiative, and his connections, the DCD playing field was leveled.  If Bennett could find his way back to the people whom he represents, there are other budget matters for which the County now needs relief.  

My fourth proposal:
State Subsidy for the County’s Mandatory Attendance Program

Years ago, Manatee’s school superintendent and a law enforcement official had an argument.  To show who was boss, the official guided an unfunded mandate through the legislature, requiring compulsory attendance in Manatee County until teens received a high school diploma or turned eighteen.  The other sixty-six Florida counties require school attendance only until age sixteen.  

Since the bill was passed, the school board has been paying the costs of this successful mandatory attendance program.  It has helped many students receive their diploma while keeping them out of trouble, at least during the school day, but the $500,000 annual expense has become an increasing burden for the district.  Worth noting are the many visits to assess the program made by other Florida districts , whose administrators uniformly applaud our program’s effectiveness but can not justify adoption in their districts because of the expense.  

Legislatively, rather than being content with Reagan’s ceremonial responsibilities, Galvano’s high-profile meetings, and Bennett’s random flurry of bills, our school district needs monetary relief.  In the case of Bennett, a reasonable fiscal question would be, ”What have you done for us lately?“ and for Reagan and Galvano, ”What have you ever done for us?“  If our two term-limited House members and our lost-at-sea Senator would apply themselves, they could enable our district to receive fair compensation for its mandatory attendance program.  The county law enforcement official has long since exacted his pound of flesh.