Voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, approved an increase in sales tax in 2016 from 6 cents per dollar to 7 cents. Half of the funds collected were given to Palm Beach County schools to aid in renovation of infrastructure. Unfortunately, while the school buildings and roads were given a much-needed facelift, the programs that educate the district’s students were left untouched.
Palm Beach County is the nation’s 11th largest school district with 200,000 students and over 12,000 teachers, according to James Gavrilos, the president of the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County, a non-profit organization that assists in raising money for schools.
A lack of school funding for programs that teachers use to help their students learn more effectively as well as essential school supplies has been an ongoing issue for years. More often than not, the funding for the supplies that students may need to succeed comes from the teachers.
“We’re handcuffed with what we can do because a lot of the ‘extra’ stuff comes out of our pockets,” said Sam Pasley, a 10th and 11th grade teacher at Olympic Heights Community High School in Palm Beach County. “We do get lead money every year which was about $250 this past year, which is money from the state that we’re allowed to spend. Other than that you get maybe between one and two hundred dollars from your school that you’re allowed to spend on supplies and anything above that you have to spend on your own.”
Compared to other states, the way that Florida’s school system has been organized has created an unbalance between school districts throughout the state. The lack of school funding is greater in districts with larger amounts of students, which means that districts such as Jefferson County with 85,000 students is not as effected by the minimal funding as Palm Beach County is.
“In theory, every county has its own education foundation,” said Gavrilos. “The whole concept of an education foundation is becoming not only more popular, but its also becoming a necessity.”
Teacher salaries, electricity and insurance for the schools are all covered through the district’s budget, but when a teacher at a particular school has a creative and innovative idea, the education foundation steps in to help fund it from the private side, according to Gavrilos.
In Palm Beach County, schools are funded by tax dollars which have not been enough in the past to help the schools properly function.
“People are now all excited because there’s been a huge budgetary increase in funding per student, but all of that is geared for security, for more resource officers and for mental health guidance counselors. In terms of the actual running of the school, there’s very little increase at all per student. The bulk of the school funding is coming from the state government.”
Because of the lack of proper funding from the state government to support all 185 schools in Palm Beach County’s district, more schools are turning to the private business sector in hopes of a financial partnership.
“Something that I’ve thought about for a long term funding plan is what if we could get 185 businesses to adopt a school. You commit a certain amount of money per year and that would help fund some of the teachers’ programs that there is just no money for,” said Gavrilos.
Palm Beach County is known for its philanthropic community. A large portion of the county’s population is very wealthy and, thankfully, just as charitable as well. The challenge that faces the school district is that there is a gap between the interests of the upper class and the proper funding for schools.
“These people have never identified with education, that’s the problem,” said Gavrilos. “Many of their grandkids go to school in different states, so they think that what happens in Florida doesn’t affect them. Our message is, we all need to care because we have a business here. Where do you think your next generation of employees, consumers, customers, doctors and lawyers is coming from? If our public schools aren’t top quality, who is going to do all of those jobs? Everyone should have a vested interest in what’s going on with the public education system.”
Teachers who have had more experience with elementary school students can attest to the difficulties of trying to help children that were failed by the district. Many students that struggle with basic educational skills have been passed on through the school system because the schools didn’t have the funds to spend on programs designed for the kids who need a little bit more help than others in comprehending the material.
“There’s too many gaps. Students aren’t building a strong enough foundation, so if they don’t have a strong foundation to start with, then it’s just like anything else; you can build on it as much as you want but if you don’t have a strong foundation then they’re not going to be able to learn properly,” Pasley said. “If they can’t count, if they can’t add and subtract then teaching them multiplication, division and fractions won’t stick. When I taught 3rd grade math at a different school, I had a lot of students who couldn’t even read the questions on their homework. It created a whole other list of problems that the school didn’t have answers to.”
Pasley spoke about the issues he has faced with school funding and related them to his own struggles of living off a teachers’ salary with a wife and a newborn child.
“It’s so easy to spend $1000 in one trip to the store when working in elementary schools. Those kids need a lot more material than kids in high school do, they need more crayons, construction paper, colored pencils and more art supplies so that they can connect with the subject material much easier. You also have to consider that in really large school districts, in public schools especially, you’re more likely to be teaching kids that come from a low socioeconomic background. I can’t expect their parents, the people who struggle to keep roofs over their kids heads, to go out and buy all of this extra supplies, it’s just not going to happen. So it’s definitely a lot harder on me and my family financially because I’m supporting so many more kids than just my own.”
According to Gavrilos, Palm Beach County has made a more significant effort in the last ten years to turn schools into the best that they could be. Part of this decision was based off of the type of business that the county is hoping to draw in.
“You have businesses who are coming into Palm Beach County now. Anytime the business development board goes out to recruit a business, the first thing they ask about is the quality of the public schools,” said Gavrilos. “If Amazon for example is going to come here, they want culture, good highways, access to the airport, but the number one thing they want to know about is how well the public schools are doing. I’m glad that the school board has made a concentrated effort to try to increase the quality of the school system with their funding, but I hope their surge of effort doesn’t die down anytime soon, or our kids are going to suffer for it.”
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