LEON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) — "Why do we even have 1,600 bureaucrats in these 12 districts making 100,000 dollars a year or more in salary plus benefits and everything else at the same time we talk legitimately about how we'd actually like to put more money into the classroom."
At Wednesday's House Appropriations Committee, Florida Representative Randy Fine is making sure all 12 school districts who went against Governor DeSantis's mask mandate ban are paying a price. Leon County Schools is one of those districts. Superintendent Rocky Hanna said,
"I'm not sure what his motivation is other than to systematically destroy and dismantle our public schools as we know them but this is ridiculous."
It's called the Putting Parents First Adjustment which would deduct 200 million dollars from those 12 school districts and put that money back into the other school districts in the state which followed the mask mandate ban. Rep. Fine said,
"To reward 55 school districts that did the right thing and send a message to 12 that you hurt your children, don't do it again, follow the piece of paper that we pass out of this Legislature."
Documents in the proposed legislation show Leon County Schools could lose over 2.7 million dollars. In doing so, the proposal would eliminate all positions with salaries of 100 thousand dollars per year or higher. Superintendent Hanna added,
"It would decimate the way we support our schools we are operating very thin out here but without those key positions our schools cannot operate as well."
Funding for any direct student educational services or resources will not be reduced in those districts, should that adjustment go through.
With the latest budget proposal, all school districts in Florida are slated to see an increase in funding for the year 2022 through 2023.
