Seminole County Public Schools expecting slight drop in enrollment 

Seminole County Public Schools is holding a budget workshop June 18, and the projected enrollment for students is decreasing slightly, rather than an expected increase, as more students opt for homeschool or private schools.

That could create pressure on the $1.3 billion SCPS budget, as the biggest variable in the SCPS budget is the money coming in based on its per-student allocations from the state. The drop in enrollment is because more students are opting for private school, according to school board members. Florida’s Step Up for Students program, which lawmakers expanded for the 2024-25 school year, allows state money to be used for vouchers or scholarships at private schools.

“Our projected enrollment is down 175 (students), so it’s not a huge number,” said SCPS Chief Financial Officer Tim Bargeron in an interview with Oviedo Community News. “We prefer to have increasing enrollment for sure, but that’s not a terrible decline. But we don’t know until students actually show up.” 

Seminole County Public Schools is the single largest employer in Seminole County, with 7,227 employees, or about 2.6 percent of the entire workforce in Seminole County, according to data from the Orlando Economic Development Commission. The next largest employers in the county, Publix Supermarkets and AdventHealth, have 3,451 and 2,364 employees, respectively.

SCPS has about 60,000 students. Even with a slight drop in enrollment, the total budget is expected to increase slightly because of increases in state funding and fund balances carrying over from the current year. 

He said the drop in enrollment doesn’t necessarily equate to a drop in teachers because the expected drop will be spread out across the district.

“We had some small staffing reductions, but that’s more of a human resources question,” Bargeron said. “We don’t have to lay anybody off because we have so many vacancies.” 

Schools are funded with a combination of property tax millage and state funding. The current SCPS millage rate is, in total, 5.378, or $537 for every $100,000 in the taxable value of a home. The largest part of the schools’ budget is what’s called the Required Local Effort.

Required Local Effort is part of the millage rate for Seminole County Public Schools, and is set by state lawmakers, rather than by the school board. Local officials have to adopt the state-mandated millage rate to be eligible for state funding.

While home values have been steadily rising, lawmakers have been steadily dropping the Required Local Effort, so school board budgets have not ballooned. SCPS’ rate has dropped from above 5 mills in 2014 to the current rate of 3.122 mills. 

That means the enrollment numbers are even more important for the budget.

“As a school district, we’re still in 2014, when it comes to our budget,” said school board member Autumn Garrick at a budget workshop on April 16. Garrick was referring to the fact that the school board’s millage rate has been declining since 2014. You can view a video of that meeting below. 

Editor’s note: SCPS does not publish audio of its workshop meetings. Oviedo Community News gets the audio files through a public records request and publishes them here.

School budgets are based on projected enrollments, but the district doesn’t actually know how many students it will have until the school year starts. Garrick said that the school district already has 1,700 students fewer than was projected in the last budget. 

“[Exceptional Student Education Services] already had to carve out some behavior interventionists, right? Am I correct?” asked Board Chair Abby Sanchez.

“Annually, part of our discussion is looking at the enrollment projections and what that will mean for funding and we can do for our schools as far as staffing,” SCPS Superintendent Serita Beamon replied. “Can you afford all of the individuals in order to have those programs based on the funding that you are projected to receive based on enrollment?”

Another massive part of the budget is the capital budget – construction and maintenance at Seminole County Public Schools. SCPS has about 12 million square feet of air-conditioned space – the equivalent of about 5,000 single-family homes. 

District officials are only budgeting for half the year of getting the additional Penny Sales Tax. Seminole County voters will be asked in November whether or not to renew the penny sales tax for another decade. 

Additionally, school officials are asking $14 million for heating, ventilation and air conditioning projects at SCPS. 

“We currently have assessed over $100 million in HVAC at or beyond its usable life,” said SCPS Assistant Superintendent Mark Mullins. “Our current budget this year is $14 million for HVAC replacement which, when you’re tackling a $100 million challenge, that’s a bit of a drop in the bucket, although big numbers, for sure. … We want to move from the mindset of repair-at-failure to begin an intentional renewal plan.”

The School Board of Seminole County will hold a budget workshop on Tuesday, June 18 at 400 E. Lake Mary Blvd. in Sanford. The meeting begins at 9:30 a.m., but cannot be attended virtually. Seminole County Public Schools does not broadcast the meetings live, and does not publish the workshop meeting audio afterward. 

The school board is also expected to approve publishing the legal advertisement for its budget  at its June 18 meeting. If that’s approved, then at a meeting on July 23 the tentative rates would be set. The final approval would come in September.

Description	Maximum Allowed by Law	2023-24 SCPS Approved Rate
Required Local Effort(1)   a.k.a. “RLE”	3.122	3.122
RLE Prior-Period Adjustment	.0080	.0080
Supplemental Discretionary	.748	.748
Local Capital Improvement	1.500	1.500
Total(2)	5.378	5.378