On April 24th, the Leon County School Board Members discussed several issues and policies at the Agenda Review/Workshop meeting. Staff gave a presentation on Tallahassee’s sports tourism. Staff noted that just within the past year, Leon County was selected to host the FHSAA beach volleyball state championship. Staff explained how this has improved Visit Tallahassee’s relationship with the FHSAA for Tallahassee to host championships. Mr. Jones asked what’s next for Leon County School District and Visit Tallahassee. Staff said that they are working to bid on extending a contract to host football championships, working to extend their cross-country contract, and other opportunities to host sporting events.
The Board discussed the issue of whether to continue to allow the public to use tracks on school property. Staff explained that allowing the public to use school facilities is a potential liability. Board Member Darryl Jones expressed concern about this stating, “The tracks for schools are seen as community assets, and I understand we want to mitigate liability, but are there means by which that can occur?” Staff responded that it depends on signage and that you would have to have supervision in place, which is costly.
The Board also addressed the cost of paying LCS employees semi-monthly rather than monthly. The Director of Payroll gave a presentation showing the cost to be $690,000 to just over $1 million per year. This amount would include additional payroll analysts, benefits staff, and bookkeepers to handle the doubling of the workload. Staff explained that getting information from the employers would be the first step in deciding whether or not semi-monthly pay should be implemented.
Furthermore, staff recommended that the implementation would need to occur in conjunction with the 24/25 fiscal year, and a survey of staff to see if semi-monthly pay is desired.
Mr. Jones expressed concern for working class staff members dealing with working class concerns. He stated, “One of the challenges they have brought to us is being paid once a month.” Superintendent Rocky Hannah stated, “I remember what it was like living pay check to paycheck even as a teacher, so we will continue to dig deeper into this issue. We’ll do some surveying when we have our recruiter.”
Mr. Hannah spoke on some of the issues surrounding School Choice and why he inevitably chose to even the playing field by using a lottery to limit the number of students choosing schools that were over capacity. He noted that prior to this change, children attending private and charter schools could chose whatever school they wanted. He stated, “Our kids who have been loyal to our public schools, they were getting passed over by these other kids.”
Leon County School Board Addresses Sports Tourism, Semi-Monthly Pay and School Choice added by Staff on
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Worst schoolboard in Florida and worst superintendent. Put the kids in private school or homeschool. These goons are wicked.
Charters will be an endless LCSD money pit. Trad neighborhood schools like Chiles will suffer from disinvestment
The public use of the tracks is not a big liability they have been open for decades. With no lawsuits/no money lost.
The supervision is bogus as well, as Godby has been open this whole time without supervision.
These are just excuses to protect the million dollar AstroTurf fields. They locked out public assess to a public good. Here is the petition to re-open: https://www.change.org/ReopenTracksLeonCounty
It’s not hard to budget your money and live within your means. Instead of spending $600k – $1 million on bi weekly paychecks, how about spending a few grand and offer training to employees on how to manage their money. As a Leon County teacher, I’d much rather the county not waste funds on paying me twice a month.
$1,000,000/year to have the same payroll system submit EFTs twice a month instead of once a month is a scam.
MonthlyPayAmount / 2
For those of you that didn’t get past 3rd grade math, you divide by two and pay that amount on the 1st and 16th.
It’s an EFT. Electronic Funds Transfer. The banks don’t charge you to put money into their system.
That computer’s operational costs are the same whether it’s running payroll or sitting there idle.
They take our money to build these facilities then tell us we can’t use them because it would cost too much. The politicians in this city purposely drive the crime rate up then shake us down for more money to fix the mess they made. Then they wonder why we are so angry… the Leon County School Board is the biggest collective of cretins ever assembled in the sunshine state!
Just look at the picture, they are grinning like a pack of hyenas who are about to devour your child.
Let me see if I understand this…Leon County School employees want to be paid twice a month because they can figure out how to spread what they earn over 15 days but not 30 days….What’s next…being paid daily?
Let me get this straight, it was just last Month you were talking about NEEDING more Money and raising our Property Taxes to give Teachers a Raise and now THIS Month you are talking about spending $690,000 to just over $1 million per year to go from being paid ONCE a Month to Twice a Month? You people are all over the Map on how to waste Money.