Ellis responds to DiPatri; facts trump emotion – again

‘Public Education Enemy Number One’ still can’t find the missing $100 million

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
Th’ eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”

The School Board has claimed consistently there has been a $100 million revenue cut over the last two years. My great sin was to ask for the state revenue numbers for the monies received by the BPS from the State over those two years. The property tax information was easily available from the Tax Collector as well as the School Board’s legal advertisement in July, and property tax revenue is up.
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DiPatri weighs in on e-mail exchange; blasts Ellis

The public e-mail exchange between Amy Kneesey and Scott Ellis just got ratcheted up a notch with the following response from Brevard Superintendent of Schools Dr. Richard DiPatri:

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Subject: Public Education Enemy Number ONE!

Amy,

I am writing to you after just having read the most recent e-mail from our esteemed Clerk of the Court, Scott Ellis. I am amazed and astonished by his one-sided, negative of course, assertions about our budget and spending. This from a man who maintains the second highest budget deficit (more than $3 million) of 67 counties in Florida and a public official who criticizes every other public official, local and county, yet refuses to share his financial information and audits with the public (see Judy Preston’s e-mail of 4/2/09)! Does he actually believe that we have only been reduced by $7 million during the past two years rather than almost $100 million? Read more

Where did alleged financial crash of schools originate?

A recent guest column in the Florida Today by Ms. Judy Preston, the Associate Director of Finance, caught my eye in as much as what was not said as what was said. A slew of manipulative ranking numbers were thrown into the column bemoaning the alleged horrible funding of Florida Schools as well as some real numbers of the size of the cuts, but nowhere was it mentioned where all the windfall of the last six or seven years had gone.

“Florida ranked 17 percent below the national average in per-student education funding”. Based on Ms. Preston’s own numbers that a reduction per student of $445 equals a 6% loss, then the other 94% still left means Brevard County gets from State and Local taxes about $7,000 per year, per student. A classroom of 20 students gets $140,000 per year, every year. Considering the teacher’s pay and benefits run about $60,000, that leaves $80,000 per classroom for Administration, Maintenance, and Supplies. If the National Average per student is $8,400, how was the $8,400 derived? Ms. Preston states Florida ranks 42nd in the nation in per student expenditures, and I find it mathematically odd that one could be 17% below the average, have only 8 states below us, yet be spending well over $100,000 per classroom and building hundreds of millions of dollars in new facilities.
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