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Board members press staff on voucher accounting, FTE reserve and in-district counts
Summary
Board members examined how Family Empowerment Scholarship (vouchers) and other pass-through funds appear in the district budget, asked for clearer counts of students actually attending Okaloosa schools, and confirmed the district’s target FTE reserve range.
Board members questioned staff about how family empowerment scholarships and other pass-through funds are shown in the district budget and asked for clearer counts of how many scholarship recipients actually attend Okaloosa schools.
During consent-item discussion, a board member asked Miss Perry about the district’s FTE reserve. Perry replied that “after that, I still have almost 3,000,000. I'd normally keep between 2 and a half, 3,000,000.” When asked whether the district has a written policy on reserve percentage, Perry said there is not: “There's no policy. That's just kind of a rule of thumb based on 20 years history.”
Board members raised the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) as an example of confusion when pass-through dollars appear to inflate the budget. One board member said, “that 17.9 is being pulled back … it's incorporated within our budget [but] is truly not,” and emphasized the district is a pass-through entity for vouchers. Staff and board asked for more precise counts: a staff review cited roughly 2,400 scholarships this year and a district calculation showing about 1,900 who were in-district, producing a difference the staff said they are continuing to investigate.
Superintendent Chambers and staff said school and finance staff will continue to examine the numbers so the board and public can see the extent to which scholarship dollars represent students who attend Okaloosa schools versus those who do not. No formal policy change was recorded at the workshop.
