When a student passes AP (Advanced Placement), IB (International Baccalaureate), and AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) exams, or succeeds in career prep or Dual Enrollment classes, school districts get bonus funds meant to help cover the higher costs of the college prep courses.
But the bonus money would be slashed in half under the current budgets proposed by the Florida House and Senate.
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Action News Jax’s Jake Stofan has been digging into the debate surrounding the cuts and the claim made by lawmakers that schools won’t lose any money.
During a committee hearing on April 3, House sponsor Jenna Persons-Mulika (R-Fort Myers) defended the cuts.
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She argued a Department of Education survey found districts have become too reliant on the bonus payments to fund the programs.
“They’re using these add on weights to pay that 40 to 64 percent. So that leads me to ask, where are the FEFP funds that are generated by every student going? They should be following the student to whatever course the student chooses,” Persons-Mulika said.
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But Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar argued the DOE survey was flawed.
“These questions weren’t really clear and therefore didn’t give an accurate picture of what was happening in districts and lawmakers have acted based on that,” Spar said.
Republican lawmakers claim, despite the cuts to the bonus payments, school districts will still end up with more funding overall this year.
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State Senator Danny Burgess (R-Zephyrhills) argued on the Senate floor the extra money from the bonuses will simply be shifted into the base student allocation.
“It’s not at the expense of ACE or AP or the accelerated programs, it is in addition to, and now we can utilize these additional funds that would have otherwise not been utilized and put them to something else,” Burgess said.
But Spar notes with the House only proposing a $62 per-student boost this year and the Senate proposing an extra $135, the funding increase proposed this year is far less than the $240 and $404 increases approved in the last two years.
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He argued districts will now be forced to choose whether to pay to keep the lights on to keep up with inflation, or fund their advanced placement programs.
“The reality is if we divert those dollars back to those programs, we don’t have that new money. It’s not new money,” Spar said.
Spar said he fears if lawmakers don’t reverse course on the cuts or come up on this year’s per-student funding increase, districts may be forced to reduce how many college prep options they can offer, cut staff and consolidate classes, or even charge parents fees to cover the additional costs of the courses.
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