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Leon Virtual School: staff warns enrollment and funding timing leave $800K–$900K gap to reach breakeven
Summary
District staff told the board Leon County Virtual School has 54 completions to date, projects roughly $1.1 million in expenses and estimates a breakeven point near 202 FTE — leaving a current shortfall of roughly $800,000 under present completions. Staff will resend supporting data and prepare a concise one-page summary for board review.
District staff presented a Leon County Virtual School update during the March 9 agenda-review workshop, outlining the school's enrollment, completion rates and a break-even analysis.
The district explained its revenue model uses the base student allocation (BSA) and FTE reporting tied to state survey windows. Staff noted that some virtual course completions count as a full FTE while semester completions count as half an FTE and that summer completions often do not generate district funding because of state survey dates.
"To date, we have 54 completions for Leon Virtual School," the presenter said, and staff estimated current total revenues from those completions at about $300,000 against projected expenditures of roughly $1.1 million, leaving a projected gap of about $800,000. Using current assumptions, staff said the break-even threshold would be about 202 completions under the model presented.
The presentation clarified that the district's 25-26 Base Student Allocation used in the model is approximately $5,373 per FTE and that the break-even staffing and contracted-service costs pushed the estimated expense figure higher than earlier draft charts. Staff emphasized the complexity of virtual funding and that prior documents had mixed assumptions (for instance, the draft had used 7 courses as a full load, while Leon's brick-and-mortar definition is six courses).
Board members asked for school-level context and the underlying spreadsheets used in the analysis. Staff said they would re-send the prior large spreadsheet with multiple tabs and produce a concise one-page summary for the board before the March 24 meeting. District staff also noted that current enrollment includes roughly 62 full-time students (grades 6–11) and about 30 seniors nearing graduation; many other completions are single-course semester completions rather than full-time enrollments. "So if we are to take 800, anticipating that we would have 89 completions ... in order to break even, we would need 202 completions for virtual school," the presenter said.
Next steps: staff will resend the detailed data file, prepare a one-page summary, and continue modeling alternative paths before final recommendations return for board consideration.
