School District’s budget draft hides some expenses

Taking the Indian River County School District tentative budget at face value is a mistake.
Vero Beach 32963 has learned a line-item referring to substitute teachers is a rabbit hole hiding 11 other expenses having nothing to do with substitute teachers.
The line item, “(GF) Non-Disc Salary (Dist.)-(Substitutes),” shows the district’s penchant for inside-baseball terminology and disinterest in making its $278 million budget understandable to taxpayers.
According to the line item, more than $6 million was budgeted for substitute teachers  this year, a $4.3 million increase over last year’s $1.7 million figure.
Vero Beach 32963 asked why the substitute teacher budget was going up so much, inquiring whether the district was starting the school year with a lot of teacher positions unfilled.
Public Information Officer Cristen McMillan said the substitute budget had not increased by millions and that the school year started with only 9.5 teacher positions unfilled. Since May 9, the district has hired 120 teachers to replace the many who left the district last year and during the summer.
Later McMillan revealed what lay behind the deceptive line-item’s title, including money for teacher raises, new teacher salaries, funding for special education teachers, health insurance funding and other expenses.  Also hidden in the line item is $50,000 in school administrators’ performance pay.
Only $1.3 million of the $6 million is for substitute teachers.
Although the line item is under the “districtwide expenses” page, clearly many of the items are not. The teacher pay and insurance-premium expenses should be attributed to the proper schools. Because they are not, up to 22 school budgets are inaccurate, giving a false picture of how many teachers are at each school.
The special education positions hidden behind the substitute-teacher line item reveal there’s been a shakeup in the Exceptional Student Education Program, left unexplained to the public. Although the program has its own budget page, some of its expenses are hidden in districtwide expenses, creating more confusion.
McMillan said all 11 of the hidden expenses were “publicly discussed” in budget workshops.
The budget sessions, viewable on YouTube, show Assistant Superintendent of Finance Carter Morrison reading from his list of “budget impactors,” touching on some of the concealed expenses, but the public was not given any time to question or comment on the expenses.
The final budget public hearing is Sept. 7. McMillan said the items hidden behind the substitute teacher line will be listed separately in the last draft, making a marginal concession to public understanding of the district’s massive budget.