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Union questions district plan to fund $1,000 one-time bonus with millage carryforward and unfilled positions
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Summary
At a Hernando County bargaining session, union negotiators pressed district officials to explain how $6,065,000 in "24-25 millage carry forward" funds and unfilled positions would be used to pay a proposed $1,000 one-time bonus, saying the public framing implied instructional staff were being sacrificed.
Lisa Braithwaite, principal of Explorer K-8 and a lead negotiator for the Hernando County Teachers Association (HCTA), challenged district officials on the use of millage carryforward funds during a bargaining meeting, saying a chart shared with the public made it appear the district would close vacant social-work and counselor positions "and the district will not fill those positions for the remainder of this school year even if there is a qualified candidate."
Braithwaite pointed to a line on the chart described as "24-25 millage carry forward" showing $6,065,000 and asked whether those funds were budgeted for and approved uses carried forward from prior years or whether they were a flexible snapshot the district could reallocate. "Is that what carry forward means?" she asked the panel.
Alexis Brown, the district's director of human resources, replied that carryforward is partly "a snapshot in time," and that some funds are encumbered for multi-year contracts (for example, Franklin Covey training) while other amounts are hosted in account codes that make the same project appear in multiple object lines. Brown said the district could show which funds were encumbered versus expended and that some lapse funds were being considered for a one-time payment.
The union pressed the optics of the district's public framing: Braithwaite said presenting the bonus proposal alongside a list of vacant social-work and counselor positions made it look like the district was "willing to sacrifice social" supports to pay the bonus. She asked the district to identify which positions — including any administrative-level roles that were being held vacant — had been used to balance budgets so listeners could judge the tradeoffs.
District representatives acknowledged vacancies in multiple departments and said budgets across district offices had been trimmed (Brown called the cuts "about 20% off the top" for some office budgets). The district also cautioned that comparisons across categories can be misleading because of differences in base sizes and job-code classifications: a small absolute change in district administrators can look like a large percentage shift compared with a larger teacher base.
The parties also discussed state funding items: negotiators noted that the classroom teacher and other instructional personnel salary increase allocation (formerly known as TSIA) had been cut from roughly $1,600,000 to $809,000 for the current year, which factors into overall budget constraints.
No formal vote or binding decision was taken at the meeting. District staff said they would revisit the carryforward accounting with the finance team ("we may need to have to revisit with Joyce," Brown said) to clarify which dollars were encumbered, which were available to repurpose, and how any reallocations would affect vacancies. The district intends to post a ratification item for board consideration; staff discussed aiming for an April 14 School Board agenda but said the timing depends on final counts and payroll deadlines.
