Fewer Students Mean More Sacrifices
By MARILYN BROWN

mbrown@tampatrib.com

Families are losing bus service. Middle school students are losing sleep and teachers are losing jobs as Florida's student population sinks with the economy.

School districts that have not already experienced those changes will soon be considering them - and more, state leaders say.

"In my entire career, I have never, ever seen anything like this," said Ron Blocker, the superintendent of Orange County Schools and an educator for 32 years. "What makes this so different is it is so deep and so broad."

After losing 3,800 students during the past three years, Orange County cut courtesy bus service, started middle schools earlier and high schools later, and eliminated 560 teaching positions, Blocker said.

At least half of those teachers were left jobless.

"There were not enough seats at the table when the music stopped playing," Blocker said.

That's a dramatic change for those who were told a few years ago that the teacher shortage was a statewide crisis.

More of Florida's 180,000 teachers will likely lose jobs, said Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education Association.

"If everything stays the same, you're going to see it in '09-'10," he said.

What started as a slowdown in public school enrollment three years ago is now the biggest drop in state history, with nearly 17,000 fewer students this school year, said Carolyn DuBard, an economist with the Florida Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

For years, student enrollment statewide climbed at least 40,000 annually. Then, between the 2006 and 2007 school years, the numbers fell by more than 2,000. The total decline is more than 30,000 in the past three years.

A slowdown, or even a decline, would seem to be good news for a state that had been struggling to find room and teachers to handle the growth, packing 40 or more kids into some classrooms and recruiting teachers from other states.

The flip side, though, is that when the kids disappear, so do the jobs. That includes school staff members and people working with the companies that build and equip schools.

Building - and the construction jobs that go along with it - is winding down, and principals have their pick of teachers from stacks of resumes.

"In most districts in Florida, education is the largest employer in the county," said Bill Montford, chief executive officer of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. "When something happens to the school district anywhere in Florida, boom, it shakes everything up. ... It's the mother lode."

Enrollment is expected to continue to drop, school officials say. For how long is the question.

"Some say 12 months; some say 18 months; some say five or six years. Some say we'll never get out," Montford said.

The Hillsborough County School District is the biggest employer in the county, as well as a major buyer and builder. Instead of gaining 6,000 or more students each year and building as many as a dozen schools a year, the district saw enrollment go flat two years ago.

This school year, Hillsborough lost 1,692 students - equivalent to the enrollment of a high school.

"Everything's an anomaly now," said Bill Person, Hillsborough's general director of pupil placement and support. "Everything's upside down."

After a frenzy of building schools and extra classrooms, the district has thousands of empty seats to fill. Some are in five new schools opening in August that will relieve the pressure on crowded schools.

"We've already turned off the spigot and stopped the construction," Person said.

Other counties are doing the same.

"We're delaying, postponing and deleting," said Margaret Smith, superintendent of Volusia County Schools, where three schools under construction are the last in sight for a district with three years of losses, including about 1,400 students this year.

Volusia cut more than 1,000 positions in two years, Smith said, leaving 60 to 75 teachers without jobs this year. Bus service was "seriously reduced" this year, and four small schools were closed. All ninth grade sports were cut this year, and junior varsity spring sports were eliminated this semester.

Orange County saved at least $5.7 million this year by starting high schools later and middle school earlier, but parent pressure may force a shift back, Blocker said.

No one is sure where all the students are. They are not transferring to private schools, said Skardon Bliss, executive director of the Florida Council of Independent Schools. Nonpublic schools have about 12 percent of students, he said.

"Everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop in the spring when re-enrollment contracts go out," Bliss said of private-school parents making decisions for August. "We're worried about next year."

The number of students coming into Florida compared with those leaving has gone from net gains of more than 66,000 a year to 5,000 last year, DuBard, the economist, said.

Notable among counties losing students are densely populated Pinellas County, which is "in a serious decline right now," she said, and Lee County, which grew until this year.

The county showing the highest percentage of loss, Alachua, is disputing a state report that says it lost 1,625 students. A new software program is to blame, said Keith Birkett, Alachua's assistant superintendent overseeing the reporting. Districts have until March for final corrections.

All but 15 school districts in Florida lost students this year, and those that gained didn't add many.

St. John's County, in northeast Florida, is the exception, with 1,174 more students this year. Superintendent Joseph Joyner said his top-graded schools draw families working in Jacksonville. Still, he, too, switched middle and high school start times this year.

The county that grew the least - Glades, in south Florida - has six more students than last year in its four schools.

The growth could have been from just one family moving in, said Superintendent Wayne Aldrich. But it was his district's one charter school on the Seminole Indian reservation that draws students from Okeechobee County to study the Creek language that put the county in the plus column.

"For the first time in history, we're stabilized," Aldrich said. "This is a fluke. It will not go on."
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